Haven fic, It Could Have Been Worse, It Could Have Been The Koalas, PG-13
Title: It Could Have Been Worse, It Could Have Been The Koalas
Author:fringedweller
Pairing: Nathan/Audrey
Rating: PG-13, at the very, very most.
Length: 6148
Disclaimer: None of the characters mentioned are mine, I’m not making any money from this and you’d have to be an idiot to believe otherwise.
Warnings: None, except that the title is perhaps a little misleading. But it sounded better than “Audrey gets stalked by Nathan and Duke”.
Summary: Nathan and Duke get annoyed when Audrey has plans with a mystery man. Just who is it, and what did she buy in that sex shop?
Author’s Notes: I’m just too impatient to wait for poor seren_ccd to beta this when she gets her internet. One day, she’ll get her hands on one of these and make it good.
As usual, I’ve just ignored any canon that doesn’t fit with my story.
He’d done the hard part; he’d confessed to Audrey about the affect her touch had on him. Of course, it hadn’t happened the way he’d wanted it to. He’d had vague ideas about candlelight, and soft music. Instead, they’d been hanging off the edge of a cliff after an escaped herd of llama had charged at them and knocked them flying. It was honestly the closest to death he’d ever been, and the secret had just blurted out of him.
She had turned her head to face him and said, panting slightly, “That’s fantastic news, Nathan. Do you think you can reach that overhang and pull yourself up?”
To give her credit, she had remained completely cool-headed during the whole terrifying yet strangely ridiculous ordeal. He had managed to get himself up and over the top of the cliff, and then he had pulled her up to join him. They took a few minutes to catch their breath, then radioed the station for help to round up the confused and stampeding llama who had escaped from their comfortable home on a nearby farm that kept exotic animals as a tourist attraction, a supply of wool for a local yarn store and ultimately, lunch.
“It could have been worse,” Audrey had mused as the last pen door had clanged shut and had been firmly locked by the mortified farmers.
“Worse?” he asked, cataloguing her scrapes and bruises and resisting the urge to reach out and touch her.
Audrey had shrugged. “Could have been the koalas.”
Nathan spared a look over at the stand of specially-imported eucalyptus trees and the colony of koalas that thrived there against all the odds. The koalas, inscrutable in their heated pen, stared back and chewed their eucalyptus leaves slowly and menacingly. He raised an eyebrow at Audrey.
“Being chased over a cliff by llamas is bad enough,” she said seriously. “But if the koalas had got us we’d have never heard the last of it.”
“You have a point,” Nathan allowed, visualising their office stuffed full of hats with corks attached, pictures of Crocodile Dundee pinned everywhere and a chorus of ‘Waltzing Matilda’ whenever they used the break room. “Although I don’t think we’re going to get away unscathed as it is.”
They hadn’t. It was hard for the local Haven PD to source suitably authentic South American items for the purposes of mocking their only detective team, so they had to settle for a vaguely Mexican-themed array of goods. Audrey had taken to the garish sombrero, and had made him wear the poncho. He’d ditched it as soon as the rest of the station had felt that they had done their time, but Audrey had taken the sombrero back to her room at the bed and breakfast place.
Everybody had loved the piñata.
They’d had The Discussion, as he called it in the privacy of his head, over some pretty good enchiladas later that night, the Mexican theme lending itself neatly to their after-work activities. She’d taken the news well, and hadn’t once screamed, looked like she was about to faint or vomit, or yelled at him for waiting so long to tell her.
“So, you can feel it if I do this,” she had said, taking his larger hand in her smaller one and tracing one fingertip in a delicate line across his palm.
It had tickled, and he had smiled at both the sensation and the look of pleasure on her face.
“Yes,” he told her, and she cocked her head, puzzled.
“But not if I do this,” she continued, and laid the palm of her hand on the sleeve of his woollen sweater.
“No,” he replied, watching her eyes as she regarded his arm curiously.
“And I’m the only one?” she asked again, for the third time that evening.
“Yes,” he said again, happily repeating himself. “I can only feel you, Audrey. Nobody else.”
He’d expected her expressive blue eyes to show sadness or pity, but instead he’d been intrigued by a flash of something else. Reserved he may be, but he wasn’t so out of touch that he couldn’t recognise desire in a woman’s eyes.
But then, nothing had happened. They’d left the little restaurant two blocks down from the station, got into their respective cars and gone home. The goodnight kiss he had been vaguely expecting never materialised. At work the next day, Audrey had treated him exactly as she always had before and, confused, he had done the same.
He chided himself for thinking that his big revelation would be followed by her falling into his newly-sensitive arms; just because he had been hiding his secret from her didn’t automatically mean that she was hiding one about her deep and abiding passion for him. Although, he grumbled to himself, it would have been nice. He knew that he hadn’t imagined the look in her eyes that night at the restaurant, though. It just meant that he’d have to work harder, for longer.
Nathan wasn’t afraid of hard work.
Saturday was their first free day of the week, neither being on the duty rota that weekend. He knew of a small place along the coast that did the best crab in Maine, and he had planned a relaxing day of coastal walks and exploration. Audrey hadn’t been out of Haven since she had arrived in that crappy rental car all those months ago and he thought that some distance from the weirdness of Haven may just encourage her to relax, and let him past her defences.
He hadn’t told her about his plans, in case she found a reason to stay behind and poke about further into The Colorado Kid case. It was going to be a surprise - he was simply going to arrive on her doorstep and whisk her away.
It figured that he would be the one that was surprised, not her, when he arrived at her door to find Duke, armed with a bunch of flowers and a persuasive smile, already there.
“Come on, Audrey,” he was wheedling. “I’ve got the boat all gassed up and ready to go. There are little coves around here you just can’t get to by road.”
“Thank you Duke, but no,” Audrey replied, shrugging into a lightweight jacket. “It’s very thoughtful of you, but I have other plans for today.”
“And just what plans may these be?” Duke asked, moving even closer towards Audrey.
Nathan’s hands clenched into fists, and he had to check to see if he had broken the skin on the palms of his hands with his nails. He and Duke had been getting along better recently. They weren’t exactly friends, but they were friendly. But watching Duke and his muscles getting too close to Audrey was enough to make him want to bust out the handcuffs and stick him in a holding cell for the weekend.
Nathan’s footsteps announced his presence. Audrey looked up and smiled sunnily at him, while Duke gave him a wary look and backed away a few steps.
“Ah, here come your plans,” Duke said, and backed away even further as Nathan came to stand next to Audrey.
“Actually, no,” Audrey said before Nathan could open his mouth. “My plans are all my own, today. I’ll see you Monday, Nathan. See you around, Duke.”
Then, with her usual mixture of grace and purposeful movement, she picked up her purse, shut her front door and headed towards where her car was parked. The two men watched as she opened the door of the red Mini Cooper, started the engine and drove out onto the road.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” Duke said, shaking his head. “I thought if I was going to have any competition at all, it’d be from you.”
Nathan was thinking exactly the same thing, but refused to comment.
“So, where were you going to take her?” Duke asked, looking at the bunch of flowers in his hand, shrugging and pitching them over the wall.
“None of your business,” Nathan ground out, turning around and heading back to his truck. Duke caught up with him easily.
“I’d got a nice picnic basket, hire of a flashy motorboat and was going to give her a tour of the old smuggling coves,” Duke continued.
“There are no smuggling coves near Haven,” Nathan said, stopping to look at Duke distastefully.
“Whoops, my mistake,” Duke said cheerily.
Nathan shook his head in disgust. “She’d have found you out,” he told Duke. “She wouldn’t have appreciated being lied to.”
“I can be pretty persuasive,” Duke laughed, and leered at Nathan for about thirty seconds before Nathan punched him solidly in the jaw.
Duke skidded backwards and landed with a solid clanging noise against the side of Nathan’s truck.
“The bitch of it is, your knuckles aren’t even sore,” Duke said, rubbing his chin.
“Life’s tough,” Nathan said shortly. “Got to take your pleasure where you can get it.”
Duke rolled his eyes, and Nathan opened the door to get into his truck. On the passenger seat was his camera and a small selection of food to nibble on. He’d thought that he could have got some shots of the local area while they were out walking, and maybe sneaked a couple of Audrey when she wasn’t looking. Now it was just going to be lonely shoreline and a couple of gulls.
“Aren’t you at least curious about where she’s going?” Duke asked, just as Nathan’s hand closed around the key in the ignition.
“No,” he lied.
“Bullshit,” Duke said. “I’m curious, and I’m just after her body. You work with her. You’re probably interested in her mind, too.”
Nathan tried to count to ten in his mind, but gave up after four and a half. He threw the door of the truck open and jumped out.
“Easy, Nathan, God, take a joke when one’s offered,” grumbled Duke, backing hastily away from him. “Seriously, she has no friends in Haven except you and me. You’re honestly telling me you don’t want to know where she’s going?”
Nathan opened his mouth, but paused for too long. Duke nodded, pleased with himself.
“So how about we find out?”
Nathan shook his head immediately.
“I am not stalking my partner, and neither are you,” he warned. “Audrey has her plans, and clearly they don’t involve either of us. Leave her alone, Duke.”
Duke grinned.
“Make me,” he taunted, and walked past Nathan’s truck to his own, less conspicuous vehicle. “Audrey turned right onto the main road, which makes me think she’d headed up towards the highway. There’s only one place she could be going, and that’s where I’m headed.”
Nathan hovered between allowing his partner her privacy, and following his own selfish instincts to discover exactly what she valued more highly than a day with him.
“Tick-tock Nathan,” Duke called, getting behind the wheel of his jeep. With a sigh, Nathan swept his camera under the front seat, away from sight, grabbed the bag of food and locked the truck. There was no way he was going to let Duke follow Audrey alone.
“Glad to have you on board,” Duke said brightly as he started the jeep up and turned onto the road that Audrey had driven down five minutes before. “Ooh, nibbles.”
Without a word, Nathan handed him the bag and wondered just when his life had become so ridiculous. Then he remembered the llamas, and he had his answer.
“There she is,” Duke said proudly twenty minutes later. “Up ahead.”
“I see her,” Nathan said irritably. “Not many stupid little cars like that around here.”
Audrey’s determination to buy the ridiculous small car had surprised him. He’d warned her about Maine winters and the state of the roads, but she had ignored his suggestion that she get a good, serviceable truck and settled on the tiny red Mini instead.
“My truck would crush your car like a bug,” he had argued.
“Some bugs have a nasty bite,” she warned him, and had signed the papers right there. The dealer had laughed and made an unfunny joke about married couples and domestic arguments. Nathan, amused, had said nothing. Audrey had flashed her badge, and the man shut up.
“Seriously, you couldn’t make her buy a normal car?” Duke asked, derision in his voice.
“Believe me, I tried,” Nathan said irritably. “But she wanted it.”
“Going to be problems with the winter,” Duke said knowledgably.
Nathan nodded. “I’m actually looking forward to saying ‘I told you so’,” he admitted. “Hang back a little, you don’t want her to notice you.”
Duke shot him a look, but nodded reluctantly and dropped back a little when Nathan said “Trained FBI agent. They do cover detecting a tail at Quantico, you know.”
Duke had been right; after nearly two hours of driving, Audrey ended up in Bangor. It was the closest major city to Haven.
“What if she’s getting a flight?” Nathan said as the airport loomed ahead of them.
“Nah, she’s not in the right lane for the airport exit,” Duke said confidently.
Sure enough, the little red car flashed past the turnoff for the airport and settled in the lane for the city centre. With the surety of satellite navigation, Audrey wound her way through the streets to a large parking garage. The men followed behind her, choosing a different level to park on and relying on Nathan’s training to catch up with Audrey.
“There she is,” hissed Duke, clutching at Nathan’s arm and yanking him backwards.
“I see her,” Nathan ground out through clenched teeth. “She’s heading towards the shopping area. You want to let go of my arm now?”
“You think this is what spying feels like?” Duke asked, inching along the wall and ducking behind an open door as Audrey glanced both ways before crossing the road ahead of them.
“I think this is what babysitting feels like,” Nathan muttered as he grabbed Duke and pushed him ahead. “Let’s do this without acting like idiots, ok? As much as you can, anyway.”
The first thing Audrey did was seek out a coffee shop. They pretended to browse some revolving racks of picture postcards as she settled down at a table in the bright sunshine and sipped at her cup. She fished a small pad of paper and a pen out of her bag and began to jot a few things down, interrupting herself only to drink more of her coffee. She refused a refill when a waitress arrived, engaged in her conversation for a few minutes, slipped on a pair of sunglasses and strode off in the direction of some smaller shops.
“She’s going shopping,” Nathan said, dismayed. “You’ve made me stalk my partner when she’s trying to buy a pair of jeans.”
“They aren’t clothes stores,” Duke countered. “I’ve been here a few times, there are mostly bookstores down there.”
Audrey visited five different bookstores, and bought something in all of them. They were a mixture of antiquarian and used stores, with one or two modern stores mixed in. She spent an hour and a half in them, and looked very pleased with herself as she left the street and passed within feet of where the men were currently hiding, crouched down behind two giant plantpots filled with some kind of bushy shrubbery.
Her phone rang as she stepped past them, and she paused to answer it.
“Hello...yes, it’s me,... no, that’s right...I’ll see you later, maybe around four?...Can’t wait, see you later.”
Pleased, she hung up and switched her phone off, dropping it into the bottom of her purse. She walked happily away, and after counting to ten, the men stood up. Duke looked at Nathan triumphantly.
“See? She’s meeting someone. You can’t tell me you don’t want to know who.”
Nathan scowled. Duke was right.
“Come on, she’s moving quickly,” he muttered and took off down the street.
Luckily for them, Audrey walked towards a large mall, making it easier for them to blend into the weekend crowd of shoppers. She disappeared into the ladies’ restrooms, which gave them enough time to buy two truly ridiculous hats.
“It’s a disguise,” Duke pleaded. “Nobody would recognise us wearing these.”
“You’re really getting into this whole spy thing, aren’t you,” Nathan said, eying the choice of hats dubiously.
“I want the trilby,” Duke said eagerly.
Nathan rolled his eyes, and bought a wool cap he could pull down to cover the upper part of his face.
“You look like a criminal,” Duke told him severely.
“You look like a refugee from the Rat Pack,” Nathan countered, and both men sulked as they trailed Audrey from the restrooms to the first of a series of shops.
The first store she picked out was a jewellery store, which surprised Nathan because he had never seen her wear anything other than her mother’s locket, and then only once. She paused as she walked past the window display, peered hard at something, then went inside. They loitered outside while she dithered over the particular pad of items inside, but she left without purchasing anything.
“Keep her in sight,” Nathan ordered Duke, and he ducked into the store that Audrey had just left. He whipped his cap off immediately, just in case any of the assistants thought he was there casing the joint.
He found the assistant Audrey had been speaking to, and asked to see the pad of items that had caught her eye.
“Boyfriend?” the woman behind the counter simpered at him.
“It’s...complicated,” he hedged, and she nodded knowledgably.
“The young lady was looking at this,” she said, pointing to an elegant silver bracelet. Its engraving was similar to that of the pendant Duke had given her; not identical, but complimentary.
“Why didn’t she buy it?” he asked.
“She said that she was going to think about it; I can tell that she wanted it though. She’ll be back for it later,” the assistant said knowledgably.
“I’ll take it,” he said, pulling out his credit card and handing it over. The assistant beamed at him.
“I’ll giftwrap it,” she said, laying the delicate bracelet in a box. “She’ll love it.”
“What took you so long?” Duke said irritably as Nathan rejoined him, slipping the thin box inside the deep pocket of his jacket. “She’s gone into three clothes stores while you’ve been in there.”
“Has she bought anything?” Nathan asked, fingering the box in his pocket absently.
“No,” said Duke, sounding confused. “How can a woman go into a bookstore and find something no problem, but go into every clothes store a mall can have and find nothing? Or worse, go into all of them, and then go back and buy something from the first store they went into?”
“You’ve got me,” Nathan shrugged. “Clothes aren’t really my thing.”
Duke eyed him up and down.
“You don’t say,” he murmured under his breath, and turned back to watch the entrance of the store for any sign of Audrey.
It took her four more stores to buy anything, but she exited the small clothes shop looking incredibly pleased and clutching a large pink bag.
“I told her once that she didn’t seem to care about what her clothes said about her,” Duke admitted from behind the magazine he was using as cover. “I think I may have to take that back.”
“Oh God,” Nathan groaned, ignoring Duke.
“What?”
“She’s going into a shoe store.”
“Oh God,” Duke echoed. “That’s it, I can’t do this without food. You stay here and watch her, I’ll go and get us something to eat.”
“I want a burger,” Nathan told him. “A big one.”
Duke nodded and left, returning in twenty minutes with two steaming bags of food.
“I thought I’d have to hunt for you,” he told Nathan, passing him a bag.
“She’s still in there,” marvelled Nathan. “Twenty minutes, trying on shoes. How difficult is it to decide if you want shoes?”
“You got me man,” Duke said around a mouthful of food. “Boots in winter, flip-flops in summer.”
Nathan nodded in agreement.
Audrey hadn’t bought anything at the first, second or third stores. She’d dithered in the fourth, but eventually bought something in the fifth store. She fished around in her purse for a candy bar to snack on instead of stopping for lunch as so many other shoppers had, and headed straight for a well known lingerie store.
“Oh Victoria, your secret’s out,” Duke said happily as he wandered close to the window to peer in.
“Get away from there,” Nathan hissed from a few feet away. “Do you want to be arrested?”
“Who’s going to arrest me for looking in a window?” Duke asked incredulously, then sighed as
Nathan stared at him pointedly.
“You’re no fun,” Duke told him as they took up station across the mall in a sporting goods store. Nathan stared at the golf clubs and tried not to imagine Audrey trying on lingerie. He wasn’t entirely successful.
“She’s on the move,” Duke said, cutting into Nathan’s happy fantasy of Audrey locking the office door and pulling off her clothes to reveal some of Victoria’s finest.
“She must be ready to meet her mystery man,” Duke muttered, checking his watch.
“We don’t know that it’s a man,” Nathan pointed out as they trailed Audrey back towards the jewellery store from earlier that day.
“You think it could be a woman?” Duke asked excitedly.
“Just...shut up,” Nathan said wearily.
Audrey did go back to the jewellery store, as the assistant had predicted, and Nathan could see her face clearly through the window as the same assistant shrugged her shoulders and picked up another pad of jewellery to offer her.
Audrey shook her head irritably and left, bags sticking out in all directions. She paused in the middle of the mall, looking annoyed, and checked her watch. Nathan could practically see her making her mind up to do something, then she took off out of the mall and down a small street. Duke frowned.
“I think she may be lost,” he said to Nathan as Audrey rounded a corner confidently ahead of them.
“Why, what’s down there?” Nathan asked.
Duke looked at him, and shook his head.
“Seriously man, you have to get out more,” he said, and then they reached the corner and Nathan understood.
All the stores along the street had one thing in common; an age restriction on their clientele. Audrey marched straight past some of the more lurid stores and walked into one at the far end.
Nathan practically had to peel his eyebrows away from his hairline.
“She didn’t look lost,” he managed.
Duke, equally stunned, nodded his head in agreement, then smiled.
“Whoever he is, is a very lucky man,” he decided. “You ever been in any of these fine establishments, Nathan?”
“Not a lot of point,” Nathan said levelly.
Duke stared at him in confusion, then his eyes widened with understanding.
“Not at all?” he asked. “Not...anything?”
“Not since it came back,” Nathan sighed, looking anywhere but at the man next to him. “I was fine in my teens and then one day...nothing.”
“Man,” Duke said, still reeling a little. “I’m so sorry.”
“It’s alright,” Nathan said, now staring straight ahead, where the view was safest.
“Does it all...work?”
“Duke,” hissed Nathan, horribly embarrassed.
“Well?”
“Yes,” sighed Nathan, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Everything...works. I just can’t feel anything.”
“Man,” Duke said again, and, moving closer, tentatively put an arm around Nathan and patted him on the shoulder.
“You should check out Blue Lou’s,” said a passing man, looking up and down the two closely huddled men with interest. “Should be right up your...alley.”
He laughed as both men dived away from each other, and in the confusion and embarrassment Nathan saw Audrey disappearing around the corner at the end of the street.
“Duke,” he hissed. “It’s nearly four o’clock. Come on!”
They hurried to the end of the street and saw Audrey crossing the road, heading away from the shopping area. They tailed her until she stopped at a small hotel, pretty and obviously privately owned, instead of chain.
“Agent Parker, you sly dog,” Duke said admiringly.
“Come on,” Nathan said, tonelessly. “Let’s go.”
“Go?”Duke said, puzzled. “But we don’t know who she’s meeting!”
“It’s none of our business,” Nathan said curtly. “I didn’t want to come in the first place, and now I have, all I want to do is go back. So come, on, let’s go.”
“No,” said Duke stubbornly. “I want to find out who’s better in her eyes than either of us, and I don’t believe you when you say you don’t want to know who it is either.”
“Duke,” Nathan started in a threatening tone, but the other man refused to back down.
“I drove us here, Nathan, and unless you want to take the bus, you’ll go back when I do. Now come on.”
Duke headed up the steps into the hotel, leaving Nathan cursing outside. Duke was right; he was his ride home. Nathan wasn’t sure that a small place like Haven was even on any bus route from Bangor. Sighing, he went in after Duke.
There was a bar to the side of the reception area, and Duke had secreted himself in a dark corner.
“Buddha be praised for mood lighting,” Duke said quietly. “It means we can get a good eye on who comes in without being spotted. And there’s beer.”
“Not for you,” Nathan said, intercepting the waitress who was putting their drinks down carefully and handing back Duke’s glass. “You’re the driver, remember? Coke it is.”
Nodding, the waitress whisked the drink away and replaced it with a tall glass of Coke.
“She put a little pink umbrella in it,” Duke said sourly.
“Maybe she thinks you should check out Blue Lou’s too,” Nathan said, sounding cheerful for the first time in the last half hour.
Duke glowered at him and sipped his drink.
Audrey didn’t appear for the first hour.
“Seriously, how long does it take?” marvelled Duke. “Showers should not take an hour.”
“There’s the cosmetics,” Nathan said doubtfully. “That may take a while.”
“Showered, dressed, ready to go in twenty minutes tops,” Duke said adamantly. “That’s including eyeliner and lip gloss. If a woman can’t do all that in twenty minutes, she doesn’t get a second date.”
“You have second dates?” Nathan asked, quirking his lip into a smile.
“Sometimes,” Duke said, affronted.
“It could be him,” Nathan offered, gesturing towards a man sat at the bar.
“Nah,” Duke said dismissively. “Too short.”
“How about that one?”
“Too old,” Duke decided. “Unless she’s got a daddy thing, which, let me tell you, can be great fun if you’re willing to be open minded.”
“Shut. Up.” Nathan said through gritted teeth.
It took her an hour and forty five minutes to arrive, but Nathan had to admit that she was worth the wait. The dress was perfect; sexy but not overtly so. It was like it enhanced the woman who was wearing it, instead of grabbing attention for itself. Nathan liked the dress. Her shoes were delicate and strappy, completely useless for anything other than drawing attention to the slender ankles and polished toenails of the wearer. She wore her hair up, but Nathan wasn’t conversant with women’s styles to know what it was called. He knew that he wanted to take it down and run the strands of the liquid gold through his fingers, and that was enough for him.
“Shut your mouth, you’re drooling,” Duke told him companionably.
Nathan closed his jaw with an audible snap.
“Come on,” Duke sighed, pushing his empty glass across the table. “There’s a back way out over here.”
“What?” asked Nathan, puzzled. “I thought you wanted to find out who she was meeting.”
“I did,” said Duke honestly. “But then she appeared, looking like that, and now I don’t think my ego can stand it. She turned me down for him, and I can take the hint.”
Nathan stared back at Audrey, who had just accepted a glass from the waitress and was delicately sucking the liquid through a straw as not to smudge her carefully applied lipstick.
“I can’t go,” Nathan said abruptly. “I have to see him.”
“Well, I’m not hanging around,” Duke warned him. “Seriously, Nathan, I’m going back to the parking garage and heading back to Haven.”
“Go,” said Nathan. “I’m staying.”
“It’s your funeral,” Duke sighed, fishing out his wallet and laying some notes down on the table. “Have a few more drinks on me. You’re going to need them.”
Trilby still perched jauntily on his head, Duke slipped off through the back door. Nathan shifted further back into the shadows, and watched Audrey sip her drink and stare around the room.
Half an hour passed. Audrey had finished the first drink, and accepted another. She was approached several times by men in the bar, but each time she smiled politely and said something to make them leave her table. Another half hour passed, and now Audrey was fidgeting with the napkins the waitress left with each glass, folding and refolding them into delicate origami shapes.
Nathan sat seething in the corner of the bar. Where was he? Why hadn’t the moron who was standing Audrey up phoned her to let her know he was going to be late? How many times was she going to have to fend off the idiots who wandered up to her table, thinking they had a chance with her?
His eyes narrowed as the guy he had deemed too short for her came stumbling up for the third time. He could see the annoyance in her eyes and the way her fists clenched when the guy leaned too close in.
Ok, that was enough. No matter that he’d blow his cover, he would not sit by and let the woman he loved be subject to unwanted attentions. Unless they were his, of course. As he stood up and strode toward the table, he could hear her voice, tinged with irritation.
“I’ve asked you before, now I’m telling you. Leave me alone.”
“Aw, come on sugar, a woman doesn’t get all dressed up like that to sit alone in a hotel bar. Why don’t you let ol’Stevie buy you a drink and we can get better acquainted?”
Audrey was leaning back now, to be out of range of his obviously powerful breath.
“I’m waiting for someone,” she said icily. “Go away.”
“Well, where is he honey?” the older man leered. “I don’t think he’s coming for you tonight.”
“Actually,” Audrey replied calmly. “He’s here.”
The older man turned around to find Nathan standing directly behind him.
“I believe the lady asked you to leave,” he said, dropping his voice as to not draw attention to the drama playing out in the busy bar. “If I were you, I’d go.”
“And you’re going to make me, are you?” the older man sneered, alcohol obviously spurring on his sense of pride.
“If I have to,” Nathan said mildly. “I know that she could do it better than me, but she’s got dressed up beautifully, and it would be a shame to wrinkle that dress. I, however, couldn’t care less about my clothes.”
He stepped even closer to the older man, forcing him to bend backwards.
“Leave,” commanded Nathan, and the older man scrambled to do so.
Audrey gave Nathan a long look before extending one long leg and nudging the chair opposite her out slightly.
Nathan sat on it, trying not to notice the shimmering sheen on her leg and wonder if she was wearing stockings or pantyhose. He braced himself for a well-deserved tongue lashing, but was surprised to see Audrey smiling.
“Took you long enough,” she told him, signalling the waitress for another drink for both of them. “I thought I’d have to go over there and join you.”
“You knew I was there?” Nathan asked, feeling slightly stupid.
Audrey smiled again, and stirred her drink with her straw.
“I’ve known you were there since the highway,” she told him, amused. “They do teach us how to pick up on tails at Quantico, you know.”
“You mean, in the mall...” he stuttered, not quite believing what he was hearing.
“Those hats were adorable,” she said, leaning over and patting his hand. “But you need to tell Duke it looked like he mugged Sinatra.”
Nathan grinned. “I think Duke has more of a Dean Martin vibe about him, but I’ll pass the message on.”
Audrey left her hand resting on top of his, and he slowly laced his fingers through hers.
“So...there’s no guy?” he asked hopefully.
“No, there’s no guy,” she said, smiling at him. “I was just going to come up and do some book shopping. I had planned to invite you, but I didn’t want to do it in front of Duke. Then I noticed you two were following me. I thought I’d tease you for a bit, make you walk around the mall in those dumb hats. I booked the hotel from the car, and they rang to confirm the reservation when you were behind the big planters.”
She caught his eye and kept his gaze and she squeezed his hand.
“When I thought about you following me all this way, I thought I’d see how far you would go,” she said softly.
“Very far,” Nathan assured her eagerly. “Incredibly far.”
“I saw,” she giggled. “The look on your face when I went into that sex shop was very funny, but you stood there anyway.”
“Did you buy anything?” Nathan asked, taking a risk.
Audrey looked at him, pleased.
“I bought a lot of things today,” she informed him. “Like this dress, for example.”
“It’s an amazing dress,” he said truthfully.
“And these shoes,” she went on, extending a long leg and resting one of the shoes on his thigh. “They’re new.”
“They’re very sexy shoes,” Nathan said solemnly, tracing his finger along the exposed skin and watching appreciatively as Audrey shuddered slightly.
“And I decided to treat myself,” she purred. “I bought other things, too.”
“I’d like to see them,” Nathan told her, keeping his eye contact steady. She blushed slightly, a delightful pink colour lighting her pale skin. “But before I do, I think there’s something I bought for you.”
“What is it?” she asked, confused. “You didn’t have to buy me anything, Nathan.”
“I know I didn’t,” he told her, slipping the gift-wrapped box from his pocket and sliding it across the table. “I did it because I wanted to.”
Curious, she neatly slipped the paper off the box with the reverence one usually reserved for very precious things. Nathan realised with a sudden clarity that gifts had been very few and far between in her life, and resolved to change that immediately.
“Oh!” she said when the shining silver bracelet was revealed. “Oh, Nathan, you shouldn’t have.”
“Yes, I should,” he corrected her, and picked the bracelet out of the box to fasten around her wrist.
“It looks like my necklace,” she said quietly. “But different, at the same time.”
“Like you and your mother,” Nathan told her, taking her hand again.
Audrey nodded, and they remained silently at the table, holding hands and staring at the bracelet until she suddenly got to her feet and tugged him upwards.
“I seem to remember promising to show you some of the other...items I bought,” she said slowly. “They’re in my room.”
“Then let’s go to your room,” Nathan suggested.
“I bought some of them with you in mind,” she teased as the elevator doors slid open, admitting them.
“I’m honoured,” he told her, pulling her close and letting his hands rest lightly on her waist. She sighed and leant against him, resting her head on his shoulder. He inhaled her delicate perfume, felt the soft puffs of air on his neck and the warmth of her body as she rocked gently against him.
“Mmm,” she purred as the elevator reached their floor. She slipped a hand between them and palmed him through his jeans. “I think I feel something.”
“Me too,” he whispered, before leaning down and capturing her mouth with a kiss.
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Author:fringedweller
Pairing: Nathan/Audrey
Rating: PG-13, at the very, very most.
Length: 6148
Disclaimer: None of the characters mentioned are mine, I’m not making any money from this and you’d have to be an idiot to believe otherwise.
Warnings: None, except that the title is perhaps a little misleading. But it sounded better than “Audrey gets stalked by Nathan and Duke”.
Summary: Nathan and Duke get annoyed when Audrey has plans with a mystery man. Just who is it, and what did she buy in that sex shop?
Author’s Notes: I’m just too impatient to wait for poor seren_ccd to beta this when she gets her internet. One day, she’ll get her hands on one of these and make it good.
As usual, I’ve just ignored any canon that doesn’t fit with my story.
He’d done the hard part; he’d confessed to Audrey about the affect her touch had on him. Of course, it hadn’t happened the way he’d wanted it to. He’d had vague ideas about candlelight, and soft music. Instead, they’d been hanging off the edge of a cliff after an escaped herd of llama had charged at them and knocked them flying. It was honestly the closest to death he’d ever been, and the secret had just blurted out of him.
She had turned her head to face him and said, panting slightly, “That’s fantastic news, Nathan. Do you think you can reach that overhang and pull yourself up?”
To give her credit, she had remained completely cool-headed during the whole terrifying yet strangely ridiculous ordeal. He had managed to get himself up and over the top of the cliff, and then he had pulled her up to join him. They took a few minutes to catch their breath, then radioed the station for help to round up the confused and stampeding llama who had escaped from their comfortable home on a nearby farm that kept exotic animals as a tourist attraction, a supply of wool for a local yarn store and ultimately, lunch.
“It could have been worse,” Audrey had mused as the last pen door had clanged shut and had been firmly locked by the mortified farmers.
“Worse?” he asked, cataloguing her scrapes and bruises and resisting the urge to reach out and touch her.
Audrey had shrugged. “Could have been the koalas.”
Nathan spared a look over at the stand of specially-imported eucalyptus trees and the colony of koalas that thrived there against all the odds. The koalas, inscrutable in their heated pen, stared back and chewed their eucalyptus leaves slowly and menacingly. He raised an eyebrow at Audrey.
“Being chased over a cliff by llamas is bad enough,” she said seriously. “But if the koalas had got us we’d have never heard the last of it.”
“You have a point,” Nathan allowed, visualising their office stuffed full of hats with corks attached, pictures of Crocodile Dundee pinned everywhere and a chorus of ‘Waltzing Matilda’ whenever they used the break room. “Although I don’t think we’re going to get away unscathed as it is.”
They hadn’t. It was hard for the local Haven PD to source suitably authentic South American items for the purposes of mocking their only detective team, so they had to settle for a vaguely Mexican-themed array of goods. Audrey had taken to the garish sombrero, and had made him wear the poncho. He’d ditched it as soon as the rest of the station had felt that they had done their time, but Audrey had taken the sombrero back to her room at the bed and breakfast place.
Everybody had loved the piñata.
They’d had The Discussion, as he called it in the privacy of his head, over some pretty good enchiladas later that night, the Mexican theme lending itself neatly to their after-work activities. She’d taken the news well, and hadn’t once screamed, looked like she was about to faint or vomit, or yelled at him for waiting so long to tell her.
“So, you can feel it if I do this,” she had said, taking his larger hand in her smaller one and tracing one fingertip in a delicate line across his palm.
It had tickled, and he had smiled at both the sensation and the look of pleasure on her face.
“Yes,” he told her, and she cocked her head, puzzled.
“But not if I do this,” she continued, and laid the palm of her hand on the sleeve of his woollen sweater.
“No,” he replied, watching her eyes as she regarded his arm curiously.
“And I’m the only one?” she asked again, for the third time that evening.
“Yes,” he said again, happily repeating himself. “I can only feel you, Audrey. Nobody else.”
He’d expected her expressive blue eyes to show sadness or pity, but instead he’d been intrigued by a flash of something else. Reserved he may be, but he wasn’t so out of touch that he couldn’t recognise desire in a woman’s eyes.
But then, nothing had happened. They’d left the little restaurant two blocks down from the station, got into their respective cars and gone home. The goodnight kiss he had been vaguely expecting never materialised. At work the next day, Audrey had treated him exactly as she always had before and, confused, he had done the same.
He chided himself for thinking that his big revelation would be followed by her falling into his newly-sensitive arms; just because he had been hiding his secret from her didn’t automatically mean that she was hiding one about her deep and abiding passion for him. Although, he grumbled to himself, it would have been nice. He knew that he hadn’t imagined the look in her eyes that night at the restaurant, though. It just meant that he’d have to work harder, for longer.
Nathan wasn’t afraid of hard work.
Saturday was their first free day of the week, neither being on the duty rota that weekend. He knew of a small place along the coast that did the best crab in Maine, and he had planned a relaxing day of coastal walks and exploration. Audrey hadn’t been out of Haven since she had arrived in that crappy rental car all those months ago and he thought that some distance from the weirdness of Haven may just encourage her to relax, and let him past her defences.
He hadn’t told her about his plans, in case she found a reason to stay behind and poke about further into The Colorado Kid case. It was going to be a surprise - he was simply going to arrive on her doorstep and whisk her away.
It figured that he would be the one that was surprised, not her, when he arrived at her door to find Duke, armed with a bunch of flowers and a persuasive smile, already there.
“Come on, Audrey,” he was wheedling. “I’ve got the boat all gassed up and ready to go. There are little coves around here you just can’t get to by road.”
“Thank you Duke, but no,” Audrey replied, shrugging into a lightweight jacket. “It’s very thoughtful of you, but I have other plans for today.”
“And just what plans may these be?” Duke asked, moving even closer towards Audrey.
Nathan’s hands clenched into fists, and he had to check to see if he had broken the skin on the palms of his hands with his nails. He and Duke had been getting along better recently. They weren’t exactly friends, but they were friendly. But watching Duke and his muscles getting too close to Audrey was enough to make him want to bust out the handcuffs and stick him in a holding cell for the weekend.
Nathan’s footsteps announced his presence. Audrey looked up and smiled sunnily at him, while Duke gave him a wary look and backed away a few steps.
“Ah, here come your plans,” Duke said, and backed away even further as Nathan came to stand next to Audrey.
“Actually, no,” Audrey said before Nathan could open his mouth. “My plans are all my own, today. I’ll see you Monday, Nathan. See you around, Duke.”
Then, with her usual mixture of grace and purposeful movement, she picked up her purse, shut her front door and headed towards where her car was parked. The two men watched as she opened the door of the red Mini Cooper, started the engine and drove out onto the road.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” Duke said, shaking his head. “I thought if I was going to have any competition at all, it’d be from you.”
Nathan was thinking exactly the same thing, but refused to comment.
“So, where were you going to take her?” Duke asked, looking at the bunch of flowers in his hand, shrugging and pitching them over the wall.
“None of your business,” Nathan ground out, turning around and heading back to his truck. Duke caught up with him easily.
“I’d got a nice picnic basket, hire of a flashy motorboat and was going to give her a tour of the old smuggling coves,” Duke continued.
“There are no smuggling coves near Haven,” Nathan said, stopping to look at Duke distastefully.
“Whoops, my mistake,” Duke said cheerily.
Nathan shook his head in disgust. “She’d have found you out,” he told Duke. “She wouldn’t have appreciated being lied to.”
“I can be pretty persuasive,” Duke laughed, and leered at Nathan for about thirty seconds before Nathan punched him solidly in the jaw.
Duke skidded backwards and landed with a solid clanging noise against the side of Nathan’s truck.
“The bitch of it is, your knuckles aren’t even sore,” Duke said, rubbing his chin.
“Life’s tough,” Nathan said shortly. “Got to take your pleasure where you can get it.”
Duke rolled his eyes, and Nathan opened the door to get into his truck. On the passenger seat was his camera and a small selection of food to nibble on. He’d thought that he could have got some shots of the local area while they were out walking, and maybe sneaked a couple of Audrey when she wasn’t looking. Now it was just going to be lonely shoreline and a couple of gulls.
“Aren’t you at least curious about where she’s going?” Duke asked, just as Nathan’s hand closed around the key in the ignition.
“No,” he lied.
“Bullshit,” Duke said. “I’m curious, and I’m just after her body. You work with her. You’re probably interested in her mind, too.”
Nathan tried to count to ten in his mind, but gave up after four and a half. He threw the door of the truck open and jumped out.
“Easy, Nathan, God, take a joke when one’s offered,” grumbled Duke, backing hastily away from him. “Seriously, she has no friends in Haven except you and me. You’re honestly telling me you don’t want to know where she’s going?”
Nathan opened his mouth, but paused for too long. Duke nodded, pleased with himself.
“So how about we find out?”
Nathan shook his head immediately.
“I am not stalking my partner, and neither are you,” he warned. “Audrey has her plans, and clearly they don’t involve either of us. Leave her alone, Duke.”
Duke grinned.
“Make me,” he taunted, and walked past Nathan’s truck to his own, less conspicuous vehicle. “Audrey turned right onto the main road, which makes me think she’d headed up towards the highway. There’s only one place she could be going, and that’s where I’m headed.”
Nathan hovered between allowing his partner her privacy, and following his own selfish instincts to discover exactly what she valued more highly than a day with him.
“Tick-tock Nathan,” Duke called, getting behind the wheel of his jeep. With a sigh, Nathan swept his camera under the front seat, away from sight, grabbed the bag of food and locked the truck. There was no way he was going to let Duke follow Audrey alone.
“Glad to have you on board,” Duke said brightly as he started the jeep up and turned onto the road that Audrey had driven down five minutes before. “Ooh, nibbles.”
Without a word, Nathan handed him the bag and wondered just when his life had become so ridiculous. Then he remembered the llamas, and he had his answer.
“There she is,” Duke said proudly twenty minutes later. “Up ahead.”
“I see her,” Nathan said irritably. “Not many stupid little cars like that around here.”
Audrey’s determination to buy the ridiculous small car had surprised him. He’d warned her about Maine winters and the state of the roads, but she had ignored his suggestion that she get a good, serviceable truck and settled on the tiny red Mini instead.
“My truck would crush your car like a bug,” he had argued.
“Some bugs have a nasty bite,” she warned him, and had signed the papers right there. The dealer had laughed and made an unfunny joke about married couples and domestic arguments. Nathan, amused, had said nothing. Audrey had flashed her badge, and the man shut up.
“Seriously, you couldn’t make her buy a normal car?” Duke asked, derision in his voice.
“Believe me, I tried,” Nathan said irritably. “But she wanted it.”
“Going to be problems with the winter,” Duke said knowledgably.
Nathan nodded. “I’m actually looking forward to saying ‘I told you so’,” he admitted. “Hang back a little, you don’t want her to notice you.”
Duke shot him a look, but nodded reluctantly and dropped back a little when Nathan said “Trained FBI agent. They do cover detecting a tail at Quantico, you know.”
Duke had been right; after nearly two hours of driving, Audrey ended up in Bangor. It was the closest major city to Haven.
“What if she’s getting a flight?” Nathan said as the airport loomed ahead of them.
“Nah, she’s not in the right lane for the airport exit,” Duke said confidently.
Sure enough, the little red car flashed past the turnoff for the airport and settled in the lane for the city centre. With the surety of satellite navigation, Audrey wound her way through the streets to a large parking garage. The men followed behind her, choosing a different level to park on and relying on Nathan’s training to catch up with Audrey.
“There she is,” hissed Duke, clutching at Nathan’s arm and yanking him backwards.
“I see her,” Nathan ground out through clenched teeth. “She’s heading towards the shopping area. You want to let go of my arm now?”
“You think this is what spying feels like?” Duke asked, inching along the wall and ducking behind an open door as Audrey glanced both ways before crossing the road ahead of them.
“I think this is what babysitting feels like,” Nathan muttered as he grabbed Duke and pushed him ahead. “Let’s do this without acting like idiots, ok? As much as you can, anyway.”
The first thing Audrey did was seek out a coffee shop. They pretended to browse some revolving racks of picture postcards as she settled down at a table in the bright sunshine and sipped at her cup. She fished a small pad of paper and a pen out of her bag and began to jot a few things down, interrupting herself only to drink more of her coffee. She refused a refill when a waitress arrived, engaged in her conversation for a few minutes, slipped on a pair of sunglasses and strode off in the direction of some smaller shops.
“She’s going shopping,” Nathan said, dismayed. “You’ve made me stalk my partner when she’s trying to buy a pair of jeans.”
“They aren’t clothes stores,” Duke countered. “I’ve been here a few times, there are mostly bookstores down there.”
Audrey visited five different bookstores, and bought something in all of them. They were a mixture of antiquarian and used stores, with one or two modern stores mixed in. She spent an hour and a half in them, and looked very pleased with herself as she left the street and passed within feet of where the men were currently hiding, crouched down behind two giant plantpots filled with some kind of bushy shrubbery.
Her phone rang as she stepped past them, and she paused to answer it.
“Hello...yes, it’s me,... no, that’s right...I’ll see you later, maybe around four?...Can’t wait, see you later.”
Pleased, she hung up and switched her phone off, dropping it into the bottom of her purse. She walked happily away, and after counting to ten, the men stood up. Duke looked at Nathan triumphantly.
“See? She’s meeting someone. You can’t tell me you don’t want to know who.”
Nathan scowled. Duke was right.
“Come on, she’s moving quickly,” he muttered and took off down the street.
Luckily for them, Audrey walked towards a large mall, making it easier for them to blend into the weekend crowd of shoppers. She disappeared into the ladies’ restrooms, which gave them enough time to buy two truly ridiculous hats.
“It’s a disguise,” Duke pleaded. “Nobody would recognise us wearing these.”
“You’re really getting into this whole spy thing, aren’t you,” Nathan said, eying the choice of hats dubiously.
“I want the trilby,” Duke said eagerly.
Nathan rolled his eyes, and bought a wool cap he could pull down to cover the upper part of his face.
“You look like a criminal,” Duke told him severely.
“You look like a refugee from the Rat Pack,” Nathan countered, and both men sulked as they trailed Audrey from the restrooms to the first of a series of shops.
The first store she picked out was a jewellery store, which surprised Nathan because he had never seen her wear anything other than her mother’s locket, and then only once. She paused as she walked past the window display, peered hard at something, then went inside. They loitered outside while she dithered over the particular pad of items inside, but she left without purchasing anything.
“Keep her in sight,” Nathan ordered Duke, and he ducked into the store that Audrey had just left. He whipped his cap off immediately, just in case any of the assistants thought he was there casing the joint.
He found the assistant Audrey had been speaking to, and asked to see the pad of items that had caught her eye.
“Boyfriend?” the woman behind the counter simpered at him.
“It’s...complicated,” he hedged, and she nodded knowledgably.
“The young lady was looking at this,” she said, pointing to an elegant silver bracelet. Its engraving was similar to that of the pendant Duke had given her; not identical, but complimentary.
“Why didn’t she buy it?” he asked.
“She said that she was going to think about it; I can tell that she wanted it though. She’ll be back for it later,” the assistant said knowledgably.
“I’ll take it,” he said, pulling out his credit card and handing it over. The assistant beamed at him.
“I’ll giftwrap it,” she said, laying the delicate bracelet in a box. “She’ll love it.”
“What took you so long?” Duke said irritably as Nathan rejoined him, slipping the thin box inside the deep pocket of his jacket. “She’s gone into three clothes stores while you’ve been in there.”
“Has she bought anything?” Nathan asked, fingering the box in his pocket absently.
“No,” said Duke, sounding confused. “How can a woman go into a bookstore and find something no problem, but go into every clothes store a mall can have and find nothing? Or worse, go into all of them, and then go back and buy something from the first store they went into?”
“You’ve got me,” Nathan shrugged. “Clothes aren’t really my thing.”
Duke eyed him up and down.
“You don’t say,” he murmured under his breath, and turned back to watch the entrance of the store for any sign of Audrey.
It took her four more stores to buy anything, but she exited the small clothes shop looking incredibly pleased and clutching a large pink bag.
“I told her once that she didn’t seem to care about what her clothes said about her,” Duke admitted from behind the magazine he was using as cover. “I think I may have to take that back.”
“Oh God,” Nathan groaned, ignoring Duke.
“What?”
“She’s going into a shoe store.”
“Oh God,” Duke echoed. “That’s it, I can’t do this without food. You stay here and watch her, I’ll go and get us something to eat.”
“I want a burger,” Nathan told him. “A big one.”
Duke nodded and left, returning in twenty minutes with two steaming bags of food.
“I thought I’d have to hunt for you,” he told Nathan, passing him a bag.
“She’s still in there,” marvelled Nathan. “Twenty minutes, trying on shoes. How difficult is it to decide if you want shoes?”
“You got me man,” Duke said around a mouthful of food. “Boots in winter, flip-flops in summer.”
Nathan nodded in agreement.
Audrey hadn’t bought anything at the first, second or third stores. She’d dithered in the fourth, but eventually bought something in the fifth store. She fished around in her purse for a candy bar to snack on instead of stopping for lunch as so many other shoppers had, and headed straight for a well known lingerie store.
“Oh Victoria, your secret’s out,” Duke said happily as he wandered close to the window to peer in.
“Get away from there,” Nathan hissed from a few feet away. “Do you want to be arrested?”
“Who’s going to arrest me for looking in a window?” Duke asked incredulously, then sighed as
Nathan stared at him pointedly.
“You’re no fun,” Duke told him as they took up station across the mall in a sporting goods store. Nathan stared at the golf clubs and tried not to imagine Audrey trying on lingerie. He wasn’t entirely successful.
“She’s on the move,” Duke said, cutting into Nathan’s happy fantasy of Audrey locking the office door and pulling off her clothes to reveal some of Victoria’s finest.
“She must be ready to meet her mystery man,” Duke muttered, checking his watch.
“We don’t know that it’s a man,” Nathan pointed out as they trailed Audrey back towards the jewellery store from earlier that day.
“You think it could be a woman?” Duke asked excitedly.
“Just...shut up,” Nathan said wearily.
Audrey did go back to the jewellery store, as the assistant had predicted, and Nathan could see her face clearly through the window as the same assistant shrugged her shoulders and picked up another pad of jewellery to offer her.
Audrey shook her head irritably and left, bags sticking out in all directions. She paused in the middle of the mall, looking annoyed, and checked her watch. Nathan could practically see her making her mind up to do something, then she took off out of the mall and down a small street. Duke frowned.
“I think she may be lost,” he said to Nathan as Audrey rounded a corner confidently ahead of them.
“Why, what’s down there?” Nathan asked.
Duke looked at him, and shook his head.
“Seriously man, you have to get out more,” he said, and then they reached the corner and Nathan understood.
All the stores along the street had one thing in common; an age restriction on their clientele. Audrey marched straight past some of the more lurid stores and walked into one at the far end.
Nathan practically had to peel his eyebrows away from his hairline.
“She didn’t look lost,” he managed.
Duke, equally stunned, nodded his head in agreement, then smiled.
“Whoever he is, is a very lucky man,” he decided. “You ever been in any of these fine establishments, Nathan?”
“Not a lot of point,” Nathan said levelly.
Duke stared at him in confusion, then his eyes widened with understanding.
“Not at all?” he asked. “Not...anything?”
“Not since it came back,” Nathan sighed, looking anywhere but at the man next to him. “I was fine in my teens and then one day...nothing.”
“Man,” Duke said, still reeling a little. “I’m so sorry.”
“It’s alright,” Nathan said, now staring straight ahead, where the view was safest.
“Does it all...work?”
“Duke,” hissed Nathan, horribly embarrassed.
“Well?”
“Yes,” sighed Nathan, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Everything...works. I just can’t feel anything.”
“Man,” Duke said again, and, moving closer, tentatively put an arm around Nathan and patted him on the shoulder.
“You should check out Blue Lou’s,” said a passing man, looking up and down the two closely huddled men with interest. “Should be right up your...alley.”
He laughed as both men dived away from each other, and in the confusion and embarrassment Nathan saw Audrey disappearing around the corner at the end of the street.
“Duke,” he hissed. “It’s nearly four o’clock. Come on!”
They hurried to the end of the street and saw Audrey crossing the road, heading away from the shopping area. They tailed her until she stopped at a small hotel, pretty and obviously privately owned, instead of chain.
“Agent Parker, you sly dog,” Duke said admiringly.
“Come on,” Nathan said, tonelessly. “Let’s go.”
“Go?”Duke said, puzzled. “But we don’t know who she’s meeting!”
“It’s none of our business,” Nathan said curtly. “I didn’t want to come in the first place, and now I have, all I want to do is go back. So come, on, let’s go.”
“No,” said Duke stubbornly. “I want to find out who’s better in her eyes than either of us, and I don’t believe you when you say you don’t want to know who it is either.”
“Duke,” Nathan started in a threatening tone, but the other man refused to back down.
“I drove us here, Nathan, and unless you want to take the bus, you’ll go back when I do. Now come on.”
Duke headed up the steps into the hotel, leaving Nathan cursing outside. Duke was right; he was his ride home. Nathan wasn’t sure that a small place like Haven was even on any bus route from Bangor. Sighing, he went in after Duke.
There was a bar to the side of the reception area, and Duke had secreted himself in a dark corner.
“Buddha be praised for mood lighting,” Duke said quietly. “It means we can get a good eye on who comes in without being spotted. And there’s beer.”
“Not for you,” Nathan said, intercepting the waitress who was putting their drinks down carefully and handing back Duke’s glass. “You’re the driver, remember? Coke it is.”
Nodding, the waitress whisked the drink away and replaced it with a tall glass of Coke.
“She put a little pink umbrella in it,” Duke said sourly.
“Maybe she thinks you should check out Blue Lou’s too,” Nathan said, sounding cheerful for the first time in the last half hour.
Duke glowered at him and sipped his drink.
Audrey didn’t appear for the first hour.
“Seriously, how long does it take?” marvelled Duke. “Showers should not take an hour.”
“There’s the cosmetics,” Nathan said doubtfully. “That may take a while.”
“Showered, dressed, ready to go in twenty minutes tops,” Duke said adamantly. “That’s including eyeliner and lip gloss. If a woman can’t do all that in twenty minutes, she doesn’t get a second date.”
“You have second dates?” Nathan asked, quirking his lip into a smile.
“Sometimes,” Duke said, affronted.
“It could be him,” Nathan offered, gesturing towards a man sat at the bar.
“Nah,” Duke said dismissively. “Too short.”
“How about that one?”
“Too old,” Duke decided. “Unless she’s got a daddy thing, which, let me tell you, can be great fun if you’re willing to be open minded.”
“Shut. Up.” Nathan said through gritted teeth.
It took her an hour and forty five minutes to arrive, but Nathan had to admit that she was worth the wait. The dress was perfect; sexy but not overtly so. It was like it enhanced the woman who was wearing it, instead of grabbing attention for itself. Nathan liked the dress. Her shoes were delicate and strappy, completely useless for anything other than drawing attention to the slender ankles and polished toenails of the wearer. She wore her hair up, but Nathan wasn’t conversant with women’s styles to know what it was called. He knew that he wanted to take it down and run the strands of the liquid gold through his fingers, and that was enough for him.
“Shut your mouth, you’re drooling,” Duke told him companionably.
Nathan closed his jaw with an audible snap.
“Come on,” Duke sighed, pushing his empty glass across the table. “There’s a back way out over here.”
“What?” asked Nathan, puzzled. “I thought you wanted to find out who she was meeting.”
“I did,” said Duke honestly. “But then she appeared, looking like that, and now I don’t think my ego can stand it. She turned me down for him, and I can take the hint.”
Nathan stared back at Audrey, who had just accepted a glass from the waitress and was delicately sucking the liquid through a straw as not to smudge her carefully applied lipstick.
“I can’t go,” Nathan said abruptly. “I have to see him.”
“Well, I’m not hanging around,” Duke warned him. “Seriously, Nathan, I’m going back to the parking garage and heading back to Haven.”
“Go,” said Nathan. “I’m staying.”
“It’s your funeral,” Duke sighed, fishing out his wallet and laying some notes down on the table. “Have a few more drinks on me. You’re going to need them.”
Trilby still perched jauntily on his head, Duke slipped off through the back door. Nathan shifted further back into the shadows, and watched Audrey sip her drink and stare around the room.
Half an hour passed. Audrey had finished the first drink, and accepted another. She was approached several times by men in the bar, but each time she smiled politely and said something to make them leave her table. Another half hour passed, and now Audrey was fidgeting with the napkins the waitress left with each glass, folding and refolding them into delicate origami shapes.
Nathan sat seething in the corner of the bar. Where was he? Why hadn’t the moron who was standing Audrey up phoned her to let her know he was going to be late? How many times was she going to have to fend off the idiots who wandered up to her table, thinking they had a chance with her?
His eyes narrowed as the guy he had deemed too short for her came stumbling up for the third time. He could see the annoyance in her eyes and the way her fists clenched when the guy leaned too close in.
Ok, that was enough. No matter that he’d blow his cover, he would not sit by and let the woman he loved be subject to unwanted attentions. Unless they were his, of course. As he stood up and strode toward the table, he could hear her voice, tinged with irritation.
“I’ve asked you before, now I’m telling you. Leave me alone.”
“Aw, come on sugar, a woman doesn’t get all dressed up like that to sit alone in a hotel bar. Why don’t you let ol’Stevie buy you a drink and we can get better acquainted?”
Audrey was leaning back now, to be out of range of his obviously powerful breath.
“I’m waiting for someone,” she said icily. “Go away.”
“Well, where is he honey?” the older man leered. “I don’t think he’s coming for you tonight.”
“Actually,” Audrey replied calmly. “He’s here.”
The older man turned around to find Nathan standing directly behind him.
“I believe the lady asked you to leave,” he said, dropping his voice as to not draw attention to the drama playing out in the busy bar. “If I were you, I’d go.”
“And you’re going to make me, are you?” the older man sneered, alcohol obviously spurring on his sense of pride.
“If I have to,” Nathan said mildly. “I know that she could do it better than me, but she’s got dressed up beautifully, and it would be a shame to wrinkle that dress. I, however, couldn’t care less about my clothes.”
He stepped even closer to the older man, forcing him to bend backwards.
“Leave,” commanded Nathan, and the older man scrambled to do so.
Audrey gave Nathan a long look before extending one long leg and nudging the chair opposite her out slightly.
Nathan sat on it, trying not to notice the shimmering sheen on her leg and wonder if she was wearing stockings or pantyhose. He braced himself for a well-deserved tongue lashing, but was surprised to see Audrey smiling.
“Took you long enough,” she told him, signalling the waitress for another drink for both of them. “I thought I’d have to go over there and join you.”
“You knew I was there?” Nathan asked, feeling slightly stupid.
Audrey smiled again, and stirred her drink with her straw.
“I’ve known you were there since the highway,” she told him, amused. “They do teach us how to pick up on tails at Quantico, you know.”
“You mean, in the mall...” he stuttered, not quite believing what he was hearing.
“Those hats were adorable,” she said, leaning over and patting his hand. “But you need to tell Duke it looked like he mugged Sinatra.”
Nathan grinned. “I think Duke has more of a Dean Martin vibe about him, but I’ll pass the message on.”
Audrey left her hand resting on top of his, and he slowly laced his fingers through hers.
“So...there’s no guy?” he asked hopefully.
“No, there’s no guy,” she said, smiling at him. “I was just going to come up and do some book shopping. I had planned to invite you, but I didn’t want to do it in front of Duke. Then I noticed you two were following me. I thought I’d tease you for a bit, make you walk around the mall in those dumb hats. I booked the hotel from the car, and they rang to confirm the reservation when you were behind the big planters.”
She caught his eye and kept his gaze and she squeezed his hand.
“When I thought about you following me all this way, I thought I’d see how far you would go,” she said softly.
“Very far,” Nathan assured her eagerly. “Incredibly far.”
“I saw,” she giggled. “The look on your face when I went into that sex shop was very funny, but you stood there anyway.”
“Did you buy anything?” Nathan asked, taking a risk.
Audrey looked at him, pleased.
“I bought a lot of things today,” she informed him. “Like this dress, for example.”
“It’s an amazing dress,” he said truthfully.
“And these shoes,” she went on, extending a long leg and resting one of the shoes on his thigh. “They’re new.”
“They’re very sexy shoes,” Nathan said solemnly, tracing his finger along the exposed skin and watching appreciatively as Audrey shuddered slightly.
“And I decided to treat myself,” she purred. “I bought other things, too.”
“I’d like to see them,” Nathan told her, keeping his eye contact steady. She blushed slightly, a delightful pink colour lighting her pale skin. “But before I do, I think there’s something I bought for you.”
“What is it?” she asked, confused. “You didn’t have to buy me anything, Nathan.”
“I know I didn’t,” he told her, slipping the gift-wrapped box from his pocket and sliding it across the table. “I did it because I wanted to.”
Curious, she neatly slipped the paper off the box with the reverence one usually reserved for very precious things. Nathan realised with a sudden clarity that gifts had been very few and far between in her life, and resolved to change that immediately.
“Oh!” she said when the shining silver bracelet was revealed. “Oh, Nathan, you shouldn’t have.”
“Yes, I should,” he corrected her, and picked the bracelet out of the box to fasten around her wrist.
“It looks like my necklace,” she said quietly. “But different, at the same time.”
“Like you and your mother,” Nathan told her, taking her hand again.
Audrey nodded, and they remained silently at the table, holding hands and staring at the bracelet until she suddenly got to her feet and tugged him upwards.
“I seem to remember promising to show you some of the other...items I bought,” she said slowly. “They’re in my room.”
“Then let’s go to your room,” Nathan suggested.
“I bought some of them with you in mind,” she teased as the elevator doors slid open, admitting them.
“I’m honoured,” he told her, pulling her close and letting his hands rest lightly on her waist. She sighed and leant against him, resting her head on his shoulder. He inhaled her delicate perfume, felt the soft puffs of air on his neck and the warmth of her body as she rocked gently against him.
“Mmm,” she purred as the elevator reached their floor. She slipped a hand between them and palmed him through his jeans. “I think I feel something.”
“Me too,” he whispered, before leaning down and capturing her mouth with a kiss.
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