PREVIOUS “MOUSE” POSTINGS CAN BE FOUND HERE.

Mouse the Terrorist?

After arriving in Alps, I check Joe into a motel room, go shopping for men’s clothes (again!), dump them with Joe, and then drive to the park. The entrance is just north of town by about a mile so I figure it likely that they might walk out that way, maybe edge through the forest so they aren’t on the road, but after sitting inside the car, on the hood, and then finally moving over to a picnic bench where I play scrabble on my phone, I decide that maybe I was wrong. Let’s face it. Tom Stewart is a trained soldier, a master of covert ops, while my vast covert ops experience revolves around once reading a romance about a Navy SEAL.

I sit there for a while longer, enjoying the sun pouring down upon my face, when a couple and their little girl walk by.

“More, more,” the little blonde girls says. They each lift her by one arm and say, “Weee!” They look so lovingly at her that even I am almost jealous. The thought of a family and a white picket fence has always seemed like another world, an alien one at that.

“Smiling? At the sight of a nice family? Are you going tenderhearted, Mouse?”

The sound of that accent is like joy and warm honey all at once. I grin, but don’t look at him. “Not me. It looks nice on other people though.”

“That smile looks nice on you.”

Oh the feelings that that comment arouses. He sits next to me, his muscled forearm resting against mine.

“You felt bad, did you?” he asks, his breath against my ear.

“Not me. I was just curious as to how long it would take an in-shape soldier to cross a mountain in the middle of summer. Where’s Goldilocks?”

“I thought you and her were friends.”

Now I look at him. Mistake number one. As close as we are, when I look him in the eyes, notice how their unusual shade of blue-green darkens as I gaze at him and run my tongue over my lips, I lose some semblance of thinking. Everything becomes visceral. Quickly I glance away, but not before he recognizes the look in my eyes and responds with a low chuckle that makes my cheeks redden.

“She was going to steal from me and leave me with nothing,” I say, perhaps a bit more fiercely than I need to.

“I wouldn’t let her do that.”

“That’s you. We were talking about her.”

“She continued walking. We can pick her up on the way.”

“Run her over, more like.”

“Mouse, I’m surprised at you.”

“Really? I didn’t think you could be surprised.”

“I didn’t either, until the past few days. Every single thing you’ve done has surprised me,” he says then adds: “Not unpleasantly.”

All I want to do right now is straddle him and behave like a horny teenager. I wonder if that would surprise him. I know that it would surprise me.

My phone vibrates and I glance at the message. “Damn,” I say.

“What?”

I had set up a news alert for anything connected with “The Compound Terrorists.”

“I just became a terrorist. My mother is going to be so thrilled,” I say dryly.

“Just look on the bright side.”

“Which is?”

“Bloody hell if I know. But I’m sure you have a stash of it somewhere.”

“Funny. I guess the bright side is that I’m a terrorist under my real name and not my fake one so I can keep using this id for a little longer. I can always dye my hair. Do a fake nose piercing. I could pierce your ear,” I say.

“Not happening.”

“With my teeth.”

“That’s not as sexy as you think.”

“But you are.”

He grins. “Always a surprise.”

 

end 2/6/2016

S. Darlington