Chapter 16: Obligation

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Leah befriended the neighbors in Chatsworth very quickly. Frank had never been the type to try building relationships with people who lived nearby. For one, he never usually stayed long enough in any neighborhood to bother, but he'd also never found surface-level friendships necessary or even appealing.

When Leah had invited along two other couples to see "Legends of the Fall" that evening in the theater, Frank had put up a protest. Although it wasn't the first time she had managed to make such plans for them against his knowledge, he still felt like a stranger to this awkward world of double and triple dates. Leah had insisted that if he didn't practice socializing, he'd never have any hope of improving.

He wanted to tell her that he didn't have any desire to improve, but he knew how a comment like that would be received. Frank usually found it easier to resign himself to his wife's wishes, and that was exactly how he'd found himself roped into a triple date that night. It had barely been ten minutes since he'd come home from a long shift, and she expected him to be ready to go out by 6:30.

She dragged him up the stairs into the bedroom where articles of clothing were haphazardly thrown all over the bed, her vanity was strewn with open cosmetics, and Vanessa Williams crooned over the radio. Leah always listened to the radio while she got ready, and it irritated Frank. She refused to ever let him listen to country music in her presence, but she subjected him to soft rock ballads on a daily basis.

"You already have stubble," she sighed, running her newly polished fingertips along his jaw.

"I don't have time to shave." He resisted rolling his eyes as she handed him a blue button-down shirt and went back to her vanity.

His mind grew weary of trying to think of excuses for why he couldn't go out. His wife was something of a cinephile, and she expected her husband to share her love of film. They had first discovered their differences on the matter the night she had asked him to see "Nell." He had found it difficult to explain the chain of trauma he had associated with Jodie Foster. Because seeing the actress made him think of John Hinckley Jr.'s motive for attempting assassination on Ronald Reagan. He had thought the incident would've scared his wife off from ever inviting him to the movie theater again. But unfortunately he was wrong.

"By the way," Leah called to him from across the bedroom, "whatever you do, don't sit next to Cheryl when we get to the theater."

Frank stopped buttoning his shirt to ask, "Why not?"

"Because Veronica said she was practically salivating over you the last time we were all together."

Frank shared an uneasy glance with his wife through the mirror. "I'm sure she'll be too busy salivating over Brad Pitt to notice me tonight," he said tersely.

Leah raised her eyebrows as she dabbed perfume onto her wrists. "You're bringing your gun?"

He looked over his shoulder at her as he extracted his pistol from its hiding spot under the mattress. "Yeah?"

"It's just the movies, Frank. We aren't going downtown."

He ignored her and nested the pistol in the holster on his waist.

She giggled teasingly at him, shaking her head as she watched his reflection in the mirror. She tilted her chin up to apply lipstick, and he was momentarily taken by her beauty. He moved toward the vanity to stand behind her, gently moving her curls aside with one hand to kiss the nape of her neck.

"Stop it," she murmured, her eyes alight with insincerity, "you're going to mess me up." She used the lipstick as a weapon to scare him off.

Then the radio started playing a new song.

He was painfully familiar with the introductory riffs of all of Rachel Marron's songs. Although "How Will I Know" had been one of her earlier hits before he'd met her, it still jostled his heart all the same to hear her voice. As much as Frank couldn't stand his wife's obsession with Wilson Phillips or Belinda Carlisle, he'd ironically found their songs much easier to stomach than this.

Leah's eyes changed from tender to suspicious as she recognized the song. Ever since he had revealed his prior position as Rachel's bodyguard to his wife, it had put a significant strain on their relationship. He had taken too much effort to cover his reactions around Leah, and she had picked up on it easily. Still, they had never discussed it out loud.

Frank smiled weakly at his wife's reflection then shifted his attention to the window. He could still see her watching him in the glass. His heart beat faster with every challenging note Rachel's voice hit on the radio behind him.

He knew Leah too well. She wouldn't acknowledge it. She wouldn't bother to change the station. She wanted to watch him, to test him, to gauge his behavior. He had never revealed the true extent of his involvement with Rachel beyond being her employee, but he somehow felt that Leah knew it just from observing him during moments like this.

The past week had been a positive one as far as his marriage was concerned. But it only took one simple song to ruin the upward trend. It had been the same last month when Leah caught him looking at Rachel's face on the cover of "Vanity Fair" while in line at the grocery store. The month before that, it was when they were watching TV together and Rachel appeared unexpectedly in a Dior commercial, dressed in figure-clinging golden gauze.

He had no hope of stopping those setbacks; it was a part of life. If just the sight of Rachel's face was enough to make his wife question him, what was the point of being married?

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Frank wasn't sure he could get used to living out here alone. Having heard the sounds of laughter echoing through these walls, and smelled the wonderful aroma of home cooked meals from the kitchen, and felt the warmth of having other bodies around, he knew it would leave a void if he were to move in by himself. He wondered at how his father had done it for so many years after the death of his mother. Maybe it had been different for him — he had Foster, and he had neighbors — Dave and Cindy Wells on Antler Drive, and Ron and Beverly Broadbank from a half mile up the mountain. Although Frank had never really minded living alone, his time as a bachelor had always been overridden by the demands of his work. He was never really alone when he was constantly watching over someone other than himself.

Having been exposed to Rachel Marron so intimately again, he knew that if he were to be parted from her, he would be preoccupied by the thought of her every waking moment. All the work he'd done in trying to rescind her memory from his life would be undone and he'd have to start from square one. It was a problem to which he could find no solution. He couldn't pursue a long term relationship with her – he certainly couldn't marry her. She had said herself that she never wanted to marry. The very thought was poison. Still, he couldn't help but wonder if their paths had crossed for a reason.

He hadn't the faintest idea of what his own intentions were in bringing her out here. If he was being honest with himself, maybe he only wanted to play house, to pretend he had a family. Perhaps he wanted to experiment with the idea, to have a harmless trial run. But it wasn't harmless. He was toying with not only his own emotions and expectations, but those of an innocent woman and her son as well.

Fletcher had grown into an incredible young man, and Frank could genuinely say that he would miss the boy dearly if he had to say goodbye to him forever again. They had so much in common, personality-wise, it was actually perplexing. It fulfilled something deep inside of Frank to have taken on the role of someone's mentor. Fletcher looked up to him in every way imaginable, and the feeling of being revered in such a way was addicting.

He should not have felt that way. He should have been more in control of his emotions. But he had set the trap for himself, and as such he had no one else to blame. He didn't have to call Rachel that night and invite her here. He didn't have to coordinate with Fletcher to come and surprise her. He didn't even have to be here at all. He could have kept working through the holidays with the senator and ended his contract on the first of the year like he was supposed to.

But he didn't regret it. Far from it. The longer Rachel and Fletcher stayed here with him, the more right everything felt. And that scared him. Because no matter how much he loved feeling this way, his better judgment always brought him full circle again. He couldn't be with Rachel Marron long term. They were from two different worlds. She would never be content out here, and it would end up being a repeat of his last relationship. The risks were too high.

He never recalled a time in his life when he'd felt this torn about anything.

Seeing her face made him forget those feelings, at least temporarily. It seemed like a non-negotiable when she smiled her glowing smile at him. There was no battle to be held, for he had already surrendered at the sight of her perfect face, and the sound of her perfect voice.

There had been a time, back when he worked for her, where he'd gone to bed every night with one of her songs stuck in his head. That was, if he'd even had the chance to hit the pillow when it was still dark outside. He still felt the ache in his bones from those late, long, rough nights where he'd followed her around Los Angeles until the crack of dawn. He didn't expect her to understand how draining it was for someone in his position to work that long, needing to rely on sharp senses, which naturally grew weaker from lack of rest. She would crash at six in the morning, and sleep until three in the afternoon, blissfully unaware of the fact that her bodyguard could barely nap before he had to create a plan of attack for the next hectic night on her hot heels.

And in the times when he finally had the chance to sleep, she haunted him in his dreams. It wasn't just one specific facet of her either. It was everything. Her face, her voice, her body. Good Lord, her body. Her stylists must have had a conspiracy to torture him. She was scarily perfect — every limb, every curve, every feature in flawless proportion, barely hidden no matter what she wore. He found it maddening how she somehow managed to be fully naked and fully clothed at once. She sauntered around, draped in fabrics that seemed to defy the laws of science — clinging with unholy precision, transfixing and translucent, and so delicate he suspected with one accidental brush of his fingers, those dresses would melt right off her body.

His heart would race every evening, waiting for that inevitable moment when she emerged at the top of the staircase, revealing more than she had the night before. He was convinced she would subject him to the temptation until one night she would appear at the top of those stairs completely nude. And because she was a cruel, heartless brat, she would still expect him to guard her through the streets of Hollywood — she in her bare skin, and he in his black suit — chasing off all of the lust-laden men who threw themselves at her.

In some ways it had been productive for him to treat her like a jealous spouse; after all, he was being paid to protect her from anyone who might have had ulterior motives for getting too close to her. Whether she had seen it that way, he wasn't ever sure. Until he had taken that job, Frank had always thought himself to be somewhat cold and unaffected when it came to a woman's sexual prowess. Clearly he had just been around the wrong women. Still, he kept every reaction hidden, suffocating deep within himself at the expense of making her feel safe. Ironically, it seemed the more he had tried to respect her, the more upset she had become with him. He had not understood it until now, a full decade later.

Her goal had always been to affect him in one way or another. And damned if she did not succeed in that goal, over and over and over.

Fast forward to the present day, and he still spent the entirety of his day watching her, compressing all of his desires into a tiny box in the pit of his stomach. In some way, having Fletcher around had protected them both. A part of Frank was ridiculously nervous for the inevitable moment when the boy would drive off tomorrow and leave him alone with this temptress. He was confident that he could withhold, but once they were alone together, he worried what would become of them.

The day passed so quickly in the company of others. He marveled at how they could spend so much time together and not grow sick of each other. They played board games and listened to music and cooked meals together, and it was just like they'd spent their entire life that way. Like an actual family. And no one acknowledged the fact that they weren't a family. Here, in this house, away from their actual lives, they could live out that fantasy without question.

Daylight did not last long in the winter, and before they knew it the sun was setting. At the first hint of red upon the sky, Rachel retired to take a shower, and Fletcher had committed to a demonstration of how to use his new Swiss army knife.

By the time Frank went back upstairs, he was surprised to hear the shower still running. But even more surprising was the beautiful voice whose echo filled the hall from the bathroom. He didn't even know the song she was singing, but he was enchanted all the same.

He walked closer to the bathroom door, as if in a trance, floored by the performance she was giving. Having no audience to hear her seemed the greatest crime. He thought idly about what it would be like to cohabitate with such a woman, to hear her sing casually all around the house, all throughout the day. What would it be like to have the wind knocked out of him by that voice over and over again for the rest of his life instead of having to hear it on the radio? Frank had never done a single recreational drug in his life, but if he had, Rachel would have been his drug of choice.

Under her spell, his hand helplessly reached for the doorknob and he gently pushed the door open. The steam warmed his skin as he entered the small room unannounced. As if sensing his presence, she stopped singing and peeked her head around the shower curtain. His mind assaulted him with the memory of her pretty face peeking over the dressing room curtain in the thrift shop all those years ago, and in much the same fashion, she teased him now as she had teased him then.

"Oh, here for the free show?"

"I heard you singing," he admitted.

Her eyes sparkled behind the mist from the shower. "It's your siren's call, isn't it Odysseus?"

He half-smiled in surrender. "Tie me to the mast."

"I'd tie you up anywhere you want," she threatened flirtatiously.

He just laughed and turned to leave, but he should have guessed she would not make it so easy.

"Don't be a tease. You can't just walk in while I'm in the shower and not come fuck me properly."

Her forwardness caused him to turn around. How many times had she begged him to fuck her since they'd met again? And how many times had he managed to refuse her? It was actually starting to get silly at this point.

Slowly, he stepped all the way into the bathroom so that he was inches from where she peeked out from behind the shower curtain. He grasped the curtain in his hand and pulled it carefully from her grip, just enough that he could see inside.

He glanced around, resisting the urge to stare at her naked body, before his eyes came to rest back on her face. "There's not enough room in there for me to fuck you properly," he near whispered.

Her eyes shimmered like burning coals as she stared up at him. "Want me to switch to the tub?"

He very much did. But he wouldn't disrespect Fletcher that way. The boy already had to endure one scarring event at this cabin, Frank wasn't about to make him endure another.

"No, I want you to save some hot water for me."

Rachel smirked and gingerly tugged the open collar of his shirt with her wet hand. "If you want to conserve water, you shouldn't shower alone."

He chuckled to himself. She was quite adept at convincing. But he loved torturing her too much to give in. He pulled away just as she tried to pull him closer.

"Five more minutes," he scolded before shutting the door.

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It was easier to walk around the house after a hot shower, Rachel thought. The water seemed to warm her from the inside out, and she seemed to radiate her own heat for hours afterward. She was disappointed when Frank had gone to shower right after she had gotten out. Part of her wanted to invade his privacy as he had so boldly invaded hers, but he wasn't the type to sing in the shower, and so she had no excuse by which to show up unannounced.

She instead had decided to explore the house, holding a towel to her still wet hair as she padded around the rustic floorboards and uncharted rooms. She hadn't realized before just how massive the cabin was – it seemed to stretch further than was feasible based on what it looked like from the outside. Most of it was concealed by giant pine trees and large snow-capped rocks. At the very end of the lower level hall, she found a closed door which intrigued her. She opened the door and turned on the light switch to find what she supposed was Herb Farmer's study.

The room was sizable, with a large glossy wooden desk beside a gaping fireplace, framed paintings of deer along the walls, and Native American inspired rugs on the floor. The bookshelves were overflowing with books of all shapes and sizes and colors, their titles ranging from hunting techniques to the history of World War II. Beside the desk, she noticed a pair of brown loafers on the floor, an obvious sheen of dust fading their color.

Her curiosity tugged at her to explore the room further, and she did, approaching the fireplace whose mantle was covered in framed pictures. The first, she assumed, was of Herb and his wife Katherine, standing on a boat dock, squinting in the sunlight. She had never imagined before what Frank's mother had looked like, but she was unexpectedly stunning, even in the black and white photograph. She had the look of a 1950's movie star, with perfectly curled dark hair, bright lips, and a slim figure.

The next few photographs were of Frank as a child: an infant in his mother's arms, an eight-year-old showing off a fish he had caught in the lake, an awkward teenager posed with a baseball bat.

There were several more photos of people she did not recognize, but the very last frame on the mantle made her heart stop. It was a picture of Frank, looking much the same as he had when he'd been her bodyguard, holding the arm of a woman who Rachel could only guess was his ex-wife Leah. She was wearing a pale green cocktail dress, and he was wearing a gray suit. From the look of the ring on her finger they had just recently been engaged. Rachel felt a lump form in her throat as she brought the picture down from its spot on the mantle to study it more closely under the dim light of the Tiffany lamp. His ex was prettier than she expected. She was very small and slender, with curly brown hair, and delicate features. She looked to be wearing very little makeup in the photo, yet she was still lovely.

Rachel jumped when she heard the footsteps of another person enter the room. She whipped around to see Frank standing by the door, a confused look on his face as he took in the scene.

"I'm sorry," Rachel started, her voice shaky as she attempted to hide the photo by pressing it to her stomach. "I was just looking around the house. I'm not supposed to be in here, am I?"

He didn't answer her question directly. Instead, his face softened as he walked slowly over to her. "I used to keep the door to this room locked when I rented this place out. I couldn't bring myself to clean it out, so everything is still the way Dad left it."

Rachel looked down at the ground. That would explain the shoes.

Having just showered, his scent was overpowering, and she felt a blush warm her cheeks as he gently tugged the framed photograph out of her hand. "Remember, we were still engaged when Dad died."

He placed the frame back on the mantle, but instead of setting it upright, he placed it face down so that the photo was no longer on display.

"It's hard to let go of a loved one," Rachel said quietly, glancing around the room at Herb's belongings.

"You lost your parents much younger than I did," he sympathized.

Rachel shook her head and tenderly rubbed his arm. "Grief is still the same, no matter how long you live."

"I never knew how hard it would be, with both parents gone," he whispered. "Even though I've taken care of myself for years now, it still feels like I lost the only people who wanted to protect and watch over me."

His words broke Rachel's heart. It was strange for her to try and reconcile such a sentiment with the bravest man she'd ever known. She understood what he was saying, but she felt it extremely unfair for him to believe that no one would want to protect him.

"Would you ever stop being a bodyguard?" she asked.

His eyebrows knitted together in confusion. "Why do you ask that?"

"As long as you're someone's bodyguard, you're always the one who is doing the protecting. You've never given anyone else the chance to protect you."

He pondered her words for a moment. "It's an obligation for me to protect. It's been my identity for so long, I don't know if I could stop."

She smiled at him. "You don't have to be a bodyguard to protect someone, Frank."

He seemed to be considering her wisdom, his eyes lost in some unseen future where he was not constantly confined to the line of fire. "Are you saying I should retire?" he asked with a small smile.

"Only if you want to," she murmured, her familiar words harkening back to when she had first asked him on a date. "Only if you want to..."

They kissed tenderly then, not the kind of passionate kiss that destroyed their dignity. It was a kiss of understanding, a kiss of empathy.

When Rachel went to bed that night, she was satisfied by that kiss – and more so by the idea that the photo of Frank with his ex-wife was now facing down on the mantle.