Chapter 23: Notice a Pattern

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He lost his virginity at eighteen years old. Her name was Olivia. They'd met at the lake in the summer following high school graduation. It lasted three minutes. It had been her first time, too. She cried after it was over, and he took it personally. It took him nearly three years to work up the confidence to try again with another woman.

In college he met Wendy. She was the pretty one – perfect hair, perfect face, perfect breasts. He had been baffled when she started showing signs of interest. Unfortunately, her older brother was his best friend. Because he'd met her when she was still in high school, he had to wait out several painful months of flirting and sexual tension until she was no longer a minor. He knew she would have given it up before that had he allowed her, but even then he had been damnably devoted to the laws of his country. She was still a virgin, and he'd asked her if she was sure she wanted him to be her first. She assured him, "yes, because I know you'll be gentle with me." He'd felt so much pressure to exceed her expectations that it had taken him an hour and fifteen minutes of foreplay before he had the courage to penetrate her. He learned a lot from exploring her, using her as the tender template for how to touch and tease a woman. He had picked up on the concept of edging by accident while making love to her. She responded so favorably that he thought she had suffered some sort of violent medical defect – a burst of unwarranted hysteria by which no plausible cause was made evident. He sacrificed his friendship with her brother so that he could call her his girlfriend until the year he graduated. Then he broke her heart when he left the state in pursuit of his career.

During his first recruitment month in Washington, he met Marcia. She was Asian-American, unbearably witty and intelligent, and physically she was tiny, barely meeting the middle of his chest in height. She bumped into him during a street protest for God knows what, and had started probing him with questions about his ambitions for the secret service. They shared three hot weeks together, masking a simple bout of lust with strategically planned dates at every monument and museum in D.C., until one night she asked him if he could get her in a three-way with him and the president. He said he would work on it, then never called her again.

Then there was Esther. The first woman he'd met whom he would've considered wife material. She was pretty, kind, smart enough to hold a conversation with him, and most importantly, she was comfortable with silence. She'd shown him a level of respect that he couldn't comprehend, and his long-subdued ego became addicted to her loving praise. He made the mistake of asking her to move in with him three months into the relationship. He couldn't keep his hands off of her, and it distracted him from his job for a time. She'd told him the edging was psychotic, but she didn't dare stop him from doing it. It was the first time he'd said "I love you," to a woman and meant it. He was determined that this was it. They lived for almost three years together in domestic bliss before things turned to shit. The more he rose in the ranks in his career, the more she resented him for it. After a huge fight that took place during election night, she told him she was no longer in love with him, and that she would be moving out in the morning. He had waited until she had fallen asleep to go sob outside in the streets of Washington until the sun came up behind the Capitol Building. Earnest people passing by on the sidewalk attempted to console him, assuming the cause for his tears had been Jimmy Carter losing the election.

There was a significant lull in his love life following Esther. President Ronald Reagan consumed most of his devotion during that time. After the assassination attempt, Frank went into hibernation in Tahoe to mourn both the death of his mother and his former self.

The next woman he went to bed with was a one night stand. Kimberly. They'd met at the post office, of all places. She was nearly twenty years his senior, but she was classy and put together, a prolific real estate agent in the area where his father resided. He assumed she'd found his morose fragility at the time to be appealing. She blew his mind in bed, but he forgot about her quickly.

He didn't so much as hold hands with another woman until Reagan's first term had ended. During the re-election, he turned in his notice and resigned from his federal seat for good.

After that things were uneventful. A date here or there never turned into anything serious because he never allowed it to, afraid of getting his heart crushed again.

Frank committed himself to a determined state of bachelorhood well into his thirties, aside from one night of weakness in Istanbul, where his prolonged state of abstinence had caught up to him. He had been in that bar, only because he was monitoring his principal, when the single most ravishing creature he'd ever seen moved across his field of vision. It was the first time he'd suffered a hard-on in public, while on duty. She hadn't needed to speak a word of English for him to understand her intentions. Fifteen minutes after his shift had ended he found himself in a tiny apartment that he wasn't even sure belonged to her, her gorgeous body in an unrelenting mount atop him. Being out of practice for so long, he was certain he had been a lousy lay, but she didn't seem to care. The next morning she visited him in the shower to give him head, and when he left her apartment he noticed that one hundred eighty American dollars were missing from his wallet.

Frank began to notice a pattern – aside from Esther, he'd left every lover feeling violated in some way. The second he let his guard down, he would be taken advantage of. The pangs of his thirties began to beat at his heart from the inside, and a craving for a meaningful relationship began to blossom within him. He moved to Los Angeles just before taking the job protecting Klingman, and during that time he had a brief affair with a woman named Sandra. They had met at the courthouse while disputing their summons for jury duty. They related on the fact that they both hated the city with a passion, but business had brought them there out of necessity. She was smitten with him in every sense of the word, and she would have let him edge her to infinity if he'd wanted. He never asked her to move in with him, knowing that the job with Klingman would prove to be one of the most demanding ventures he'd ever taken on. She still insisted on keeping a small stock of her personal belongings at his place – toothbrush, shampoo, menstrual products, nail files. She soon became angry that he was gone so often. He returned to his house maybe once a month to take inventory, and one time when he came back he noticed that all traces of her were gone.

Not one year later, he went to work for Rachel.

In a lot of ways she had been just like all the others. He ultimately made the decision to leave her, and he left feeling violated. Not to mention, with a chunk of his left arm missing.

But she'd taken a chunk of his heart as well, and he hadn't ever acknowledged it to himself until after he'd said "I do" to Leah Christensen on the altar.

He chose not to trust himself on his feelings, because he had only been in Rachel's life for several months. They had never exited the honeymoon phase, so everything he felt was biased. But the undeniable chemistry they'd had was unlike anything he'd experienced with any other woman – even Esther. It tortured him to think about it even for an instant.

She was still the only woman he'd ever wanted back.

And now that he had her, he was paralyzed in the face of what to do next.

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"It's hard for you to bring it up, isn't it?"

Rachel curled up in the massive armchair across from her therapist, attempting to disappear. "Why should it be hard?"

"You went through something very traumatic, Rachel. It's normal not to bounce back right away."

"I bounced back just fine after my sister died." Rachel lifted her chin and stared forwardly at the woman across from her.

"You've done a marvelous job of repressing your feelings about your sister's death. It's the brain's way of brushing things under the rug when we aren't ready to face them."

"I don't want to talk about Nicki."

"That's okay. We're not talking about Nicki today. We're talking about your bodyguard."

Rachel gulped. "What about him?"

"He almost died saving you."

Rachel quoted him bitterly. "That's the job."

"Not many people live through an experience like that. You're lucky to be here. How does that make you feel?"

If she had to hear that question one more time, she was going to scream.

"I don't know."

"'I don't know' isn't an answer," her therapist said. The woman was in her early fifties, her dishwater blonde hair pulled tightly back from her face, her dark purple rimmed glasses poised on the edge of her sharp nose. "I want you to really think about it and give me an honest answer. How do you feel about what happened between you and your bodyguard?"

Rachel swallowed and looked down at her hands as images of Frank Farmer flashed before her: shaking her hand for the very first time, sweeping her off her feet at the Mayan, slipping her scarf from around her neck, staring pleadingly at her as she snuck into her hotel room with Portman, jumping in front of her at the Academy Awards. . .

"I feel . . . broken."

"Do you feel like your recent behavior is an attempt to separate yourself from his memory?"

Rachel glared at her therapist. "He didn't die."

"No he didn't. But he's not in your life anymore, and it sounds like that was his choice."

Who was this woman to tell her what Frank Farmer wanted or didn't want? She didn't know him the way Rachel had. She didn't understand anything about their relationship, no matter how prying her questions, or how much digging she did in celebrity gossip columns.

"He can do whatever the fuck he wants with his life," Rachel said defensively. "It's not my business. It was his job to protect me. He did his fucking job. It's over now. We have to move on."

"You don't seem to be moving on, Rachel."

She hated the woman for being right.

That was the last therapy session Rachel Marron had.

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The morning of New Year's Day was always sobering for Rachel, who usually spent her New Year's Eves in a drunken stupor at some crazy party in downtown Los Angeles. This was the first time in her adult life where she hadn't gotten drunk off her tail on New Year's Eve. She should have felt refreshed waking up on January first, but she felt strangely gloomy. She blamed the overcast sky and freshly fallen snow for her mild depression.

She walked into the kitchen to find Frank sitting by the windows, reading the headlines. She interrupted him with a piece of news she'd just received by phone that morning. "Devaney set his retirement date. January 16th."

Frank didn't even look up from his newspaper. "'04?" He guessed.

"No." Rachel said lightly. He finally looked up. "Two weeks' notice."

He barely had a reaction. "That's a tough replacement."

"Oh, I won't be replacing him," she said off-handedly. "I'm selling the house."

His lips parted but he said nothing.

"Don't get me wrong. It'll be a hard sell with all those ugly-ass modifications you made for my security, but…"

He gave her a half-smile, but his expression was still unreadable.

He took too long to just speak sometimes, and hell, it annoyed her. He was so fucking circumspect.

"God dammit, Frank, will you just say something?"

"I'm thinking."

"Sometimes you don't have to think over your words, you know. Just say what's on your mind!"

"I think it's a good decision to sell the house."

It wasn't exactly what she was hoping he'd say, and she was sure he could see her face fall.

"Don't you want to know why I made this decision?"

He tossed his newspaper to the side and stood up. "I know why."

She crossed her arms in front of her chest. "You do, do you?"

"Yeah. You told me the other day you were sick of Hollywood; you wanted out."

She pursed her lips, thoroughly aggravated that it wasn't the entire reason, but she wasn't ready to admit it yet.

"Well, I'll have to find somewhere else to live first."

He exchanged a loaded glance with her. Too afraid to hear what he might say, she spoke for him, "Since you seem to have so much experience with moving, maybe you could help me find a place. Somewhere safe?"

"Yeah, I'll help you."

She was deflated by the casualness of his tone.

"I'll have to tell Fletcher at some point. I have a feeling his friends will be more upset about it than him," she added with an eye roll.

"We'll, he's grown now. He's probably ready for his own place. Maybe he'll move on campus."

She looked down at her hands. "Yeah. But he's still my baby."

Frank smiled fondly. "He always will be."

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Frank was beside himself knowing that he would have to drive Rachel back to L.A. tomorrow. Somehow he'd foolishly felt like the day would never come. He'd held out hope that maybe some worldwide disaster would occur which would keep her trapped there with him for another several months, until it was safe to venture out into the rest of the world again. He didn't want to give her up yet.

He felt silly for getting so wrapped up in his feelings on the matter. Such drama paled in comparison to some of the escapades he'd lived through in his past. He recalled a time when he had been threatened to be burned alive, a time when he'd had to untie a man from a train track while the engine was approaching, a time when he'd had to navigate through an electrical substation in the middle of the night while being chased by terrorists. Yet the idea of asking Rachel Marron to be his girlfriend was scarier than any of those things.

It wasn't that he worried she would say 'no.' It was that he knew she would say 'yes.' Then the roller coaster would begin, and he would have no way off except to jump. If he risked it and failed her, he would never live it down. Even if they could learn to live with one another in harmony, their lives would be on display for the entire world to see. If he could have it his own way, he would have enlisted all of his connections at the FBI to put her into the witness protection program and erase 'Rachel Marron' from existence so that he could love her in peace, hidden away somewhere no one could discover them. But they were not leading characters in one of her silly movies. Life didn't work that way.

Besides, he didn't want to just perpetually date a woman for the rest of his life. Ultimately, he wanted to be married again. Rachel would expect him to perpetually date her, and he couldn't do that to either himself or her.

How he longed for the days when things were simpler—when he was still on her payroll, sporting a bad case of hammer bite from his Browning Hi-Power.

Frank desperately hoped to find a new principal sooner rather than later. Not working was a curse for him, and if it lasted too long after the holidays were over he worried it would be a repeat of the depression he'd fallen into after his gunshot wound. He was surprised that some of the potential clients he had been in conversation with before the holidays had started getting back to him on New Year's Day. It was a legal holiday, but no one seemed to treat it as such. He hated to take any time away from Rachel to call them back, but it had to be done. She knew what he was doing, she shouldn't have been surprised by it – so why did everything suddenly feel so awkward between them?

After a few phone calls, he reluctantly went into the bedroom and helped her pack.

"Let me ask you something, Farmer," she said to him as she folded her sweaters on the bed. "Do you think when you first started working for me all those years ago, that I was naïve?"

As usual, he avoided answering her question directly. "You looked at the world through rose-colored glasses," he said.

She shrugged. "It's better than seeing nothing but the thorns."

Her words stung him a little. He stopped folding her clothes and stared at her, trying to get her to make eye contact, but she kept to her task. "Do you really think I'm a negative person, Rachel?"

"No," she answered. "I think you can be negative sometimes, but you seem to have mellowed over the years. I would call you a cautious person."

He looked down and traced the distressed details on a pair of her jeans. "Is it fair to say at one point in your life that you . . . hated me?"

"Do you mean during or after the time you were my bodyguard?"

Her quick, quiet question surprised him greatly, as he hadn't considered the latter to be a viable time period under observation. He hesitated before rephrasing, "At any point."

She tilted her head, considering his question. "I thought I did. But I realize now I didn't ever hate you." She looked him in the eye. "I think that I resented you."

"Do you still resent me?"

He was entering dangerous territory, and he knew it. But God help him, he couldn't stop an interrogation once it started. The questions had been brewing for so damn long.

The face she was making at him in that moment was lethal. Her eyes were so dark he felt consumed by them. "Why do you want to know?"

He knew it. He had created a monster. Out of all her critiques of his character, this was the one she had leveraged for upper hand?

"Can't you answer me straight?" he tossed it back at her, a careful smirk in place.

"I have a hard time forgiving people," was all she said.

There were about a hundred other questions burning in his brain, but they dissolved at the sight of her expression. She was not going to humor him with any more answers, and he would not have been brave enough to ask her.

At dinner, he finally decided to share his news with her. "I have an interview with a potential principal in Texas next week."

She stopped eating and set down her fork, eyebrows arched elegantly. "Oh?"

Frank felt his body stiffen in defense, though she hadn't given him any reason to believe she was upset. He just knew it, deep down. Suddenly he felt that same fleeting anxiety that he used to feel while sitting across the dinner table from Leah.

"He's an art collector in Highland Park."

"Sounds like quite a change of pace for you." She sounded sarcastic.

"It would probably be . . . more low-key than what I'm used to. If I take it."

His eyes never left her face, gauging every tiny microexpression for what her true reaction was. Usually he found Rachel easy to read. Right now, he was finding it nearly impossible.

"Well, good luck," she said with a forced smile, then excused herself from the table.

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It wasn't like she could expect him to retire just because she was thinking of retiring. It wasn't in his nature not to work. It really wasn't in her nature either. Rachel never expected her feelings to get this messy. She thought it had been so nice of him to bring her out here, but now at the end of the trip, she felt deflated.

Maybe he had gotten sick of her. Maybe he thought that they wouldn't be good together after all. An ideal partnership was one where both people had the same values and goals in life. Right now, they were still on very different paths. It seemed they had both been trying to make tiny adjustments to change that… until he told her about Texas.

Why would he have to go and do that? There had to have been plenty of rich old white men in California that needed a bodyguard to protect them and their valuables. Was he going out of his way not to take work in California so that he'd have the excuse to leave again?

Rachel heaved a sigh and sat on the bed beside her full suitcase. She thought back to all the failed relationships she'd had in the past decade, how they all seemed to follow a similar pattern. The more time she'd spent with those guys the more she realized they just couldn't make her happy – and she likely couldn't make them happy. But that wasn't the case with Frank. They did make each other happy. They had been happy their entire stay. Rachel couldn't remember a time when she spent over a week straight with a man and didn't feel like murdering him at the end of it.

If he did want her to stay in his life, he had a funny way of showing it. If he was interested in something long-distance, she wasn't sure she could handle that. At this point in her life, she wanted so badly to have something meaningful. She couldn't fathom going back to dating other washed up celebrities and way-too-young-for-her NFL draft picks. Not after this.

She had wanted to go back downstairs and confront him about it. She wanted to ask him "what are we?" But she was afraid of how he would react. She didn't want to make him feel guilty for just living his life. It wasn't her business where he wanted to work, as much as she would have liked to have control over every aspect of his life.

She could hear him downstairs, talking on the phone again. He had been talking for almost an hour since dinner. With a sick weight in the pit of her stomach, Rachel instead resigned herself to go to bed.