Quaranteam 2:4 (Patreon)

Chapter Four

December 11th, 2020

Brunch had been about as tense as Andy had anticipated it would be, with many of his partners voicing concerns about bringing Melody Park into the family, but in the end, Piper laid them all quickly to rest by pointing out that if she could give the woman a second chance, then all the rest of them should be able to as well. That had pretty much settled the argument, although he could see that some of his partners were certainly going to be less trusting than others.

It certainly changed the energy around the house, which was already tempered with nervous anticipation, as towards the end of brunch a text message had come in to let them know that the plane had landed at Livermore Municipal Airport. The Air Force were there doing their initial screening, but relayed that Andy should be able to come by and both meet Mali and see his airplane by around 2.

After brunch, Andy headed up to the hidden room on the upper floor and stepped out onto the balcony to make a call. He held the phone to his ear as the General’s voice leapt from the other end of the line. “So, Mister Rook, what’s it going to be?”

“After talking with my entire Team, we’ll accept Melody Park into our home, although we’re going to have some conditions for her and we’re certainly going to keep a close eye on her at first.”

“We would expect no less from you, Mister Rook,” she said curtly. “To be frank, I’m a little surprised you’re willing to even entertain the notion, considering what you told me about her history with your fiancée, Miss Brown. Piper got a real bad beat before she ended up with you, and if she were to say she held a grudge a mile wide, well, I don’t think just about anyone could blame her.”

“I let Piper make the final call, but she’s big on second chances and so am I. We’re going to be cautious about this, naturally, but I guess somebody’s gotta take some risks, and if my buddy Phil’s taking Dr. DeMarco, I guess I’d never be able to live it down with him if I didn’t do something equally as stupid.”

“We can have Ms. Park here on base and ready for reassignment as early as this afternoon.”

“We won’t be ready until this evening,” Andy said. “I’ve got to go down to Livermore and pick up my new money manager and get her imprinted to me. It’s about half an hour each way, and I understand we can't go get her until your people have cleared my plane.”

“It’s not so much the plane, Mister Rook, as it is all the people your finance manager brought with her,” the General sighed, as if the entire thing was one giant pain in her ass that she would’ve much rather foisted off onto someone else. “You’re probably aware, but she’s carrying with her one of the wildest collections of spies, soldiers, diplomats, scientists and politicians than have ever shared a single privately owned aircraft before. And she struck you quite a great deal on acquiring the plane for you permanently, if I’m meant to believe what she charged for transporting all these people to the United States.”

It was true, although Andy hadn’t expected the General to be fully aware of how they’d gone about it. Mali had bought him a Bombardier Global 5000, which could hold 16 passengers in addition to the pilot and co-pilot. And then, in order to aide in her immigration to the United States, a deal had been struck with the United States government. The plane had been temporarily enlisted as sort of international one-way taxi service. That meant the plane, which had been purchased used from the estate of a Saudi businessman, had made nearly a dozen stops before finally arriving in California. It had picked up, in addition to Mali, passengers from Egypt, Israel, Spain, Italy, Germany, Sweden, India and Japan, with each person (or the nation representing them) paying a million dollars for the private relay service. All of that had basically paid for the plane itself.

The pilot for the flight was a military exchange from Saudi Arabia who was being paired up with a man in Valhalla Shores and the co-pilot was from the UK who was bound for Sacramento. Neither would likely ever set foot on Andy’s plane again. Both Alexis and Niko were qualified to fly the jetliner, and several other girls in the house had been taking virtual flying classes. Team Rook had decided if it wasn’t a skill they had in-house, they were going to get a handful of people within the Team to learn it, although Andy himself wasn’t ever going to be allowed to fly the plane.

“Your people had a long list of folks they wanted brought to the US on the hush-hush, and with me having two internationally renowned actresses in my family, I knew I was going to need to be able to get around regularly and probably without having to constantly book flights. Seemed like getting my own plane was a win-win for everybody.”

“You still charged them a pretty hefty ticket price, Mister Rook.”

“I had to buy the fucking plane, General,” Andy laughed. “That ain’t cheap. Regardless of how much money you might think I have, let me assure you that a 16 person private jet is not what I could call ‘pocket money.’ It was a very sizable investment, so I appreciated Mali coming up with a plan to defray the costs.”

“But your little United Nations of Spies flight still needs to be scrutinized by every security expert we have on site and a handful of others we brought in just for this occasion. That includes searching your plane practically down to the studs. You don’t know any of these people that you’ve helped bring into this country, Mister Rook, and neither do we. Not as well as we’d like to, anyway. They’ll have spent hours, maybe even days on that plane of yours as it travelled around, picking these merry pranksters up. So, we’re going to take our time and make sure everyone on the plane is exactly who they say they are, and then and only then, we will turn it and Miss Merrick over to you.”

“And once you do, and once she’s imprinted onto me, then we’ll bring her back to the house and then come onto the base and we can see about reimprinting Melody over to us.”

The General paused for a second, as if an idea had just occurred to her. “Would you rather we bring Miss Merrick back to the base and you can save yourself a trip, imprint them both here?”

“We paid several million dollars for that plane, General. I’d kind of like to see it, you know?”

“I’m just saying, if you allow us to have a full day searching and examining it, it’ll be better for all parties involved,” the General replied. “And it’ll let us give Miss Merrick a once over by people you know that you trust, like Dr. Marcos and Dr. Varma. I’m honestly trying to help you here, Mister Rook. Trying to help make both our lives a little bit easier.”

“I might feel a little strange going straight from imprinting Mali to imprinting Melody.”

He could hear the General laughing on the other side of the line. “I think Melody might have it coming, but you could also take a shower in between sessions here on the base. We have the facilities for it, and you’re guaranteed to have medical staff if something goes wrong, which you’d have been half an hour away from if you did it at the airport.”

“Why would something go wrong?” Andy asked.

“So far, you’ve been pretty lucky, Mister Rook. Nearly all of your imprintings have gone off without much in the way of hitches or complications.”

“I think Piper and Sheridan would very much disagree with you, but okay.”

“You seen a cocoon yet?”

Andy chuckled. “Yeah, Alexis had that when she showed up. Healed off all her scars, and she couldn’t decide if she was angry, delighted or both.”

“I can imagine. Some of us treasure our scars and don’t want to see them gone. But I suspect she’s missing them less and less every day,” the General said. “If I’d gotten my gunshot scar through my shoulder healed up when I’d gotten imprinted, I’d probably miss it at first, but I’d be damn thankful eventually that I was back up to full strength.”

“It’s only been a month and change. We’ll see how she feels about it this time next year. I suspect she may be nothing but thankful by then.”

“Well, as fun as it is to chat with you, Mister Rook, I should probably get back to work. You want me to have Miss Merrick brought here to the base? I think it’ll be much easier if you just give us a day or two to fully examine the plane. You’re not in any immediate need, are you?”

“Not immediate need, no, but I suspect I’m going to need it before the end of the month. Not only do Emily and Sarah have some meetings they want to take down in Los Angeles, I think Maya needs to head there as well for some final sign off stuff to get her deal finalized. The plan was to have her working on a soundstage in Oakland, but it sounds like the location isn’t quite ready yet, so their backup soundstage is going to be up in Sacramento. It’ll be a bit of a drive every morning and evening, but she wants to get back to work, and I don’t blame her. The studio is also pushing hard to get stuff into production, so the fact that Maya has a script everybody likes already means they don’t want to waste any time they don’t have to.”

“Is Hollywood really in that much trouble, Mister Rook?”

Andy sighed, knowing the General couldn’t see him shrugging. “It’s not for me to say, but I know Emily seems to think they don’t like to keep material waiting around too long, and we’ve been in a vacuum for basically a year now, where nobody could make new things. For theatrical films, that’s not such a big issue, but for things like television? The networks are freaking the fuck out. So I suspect Em and Sarah will probably pick up a handful of television projects that’ll start filming almost immediately before we get back to feature films again next year. Aren’t you jonesing for new television?”

“I will admit that after my third rewatch, ‘The Americans’ has lost a little bit of the luster. I feel like a lot of us feel like we’ve finished Netflix.”

“Well, you’ll be delighted to know that Hollywood’s spinning up again and so sooner or later, there will be loads of new things clogging our airwaves again. They’re working very hard to get whatever they can finished as fast as possible. They’re even looking to adapt a couple of my lesser works, just because I’m relatively easy to work with when it comes to the non-Druid Gunslinger stuff. Fine, we can come into the base and pick them both up there, and if you need a few more days to inspect the plane more thoroughly, I guess it won’t hurt to let you have it for a few days.”

“Great,” the General said. “Come by in the early afternoon and we’ll have both women prepped and ready and waiting for you. Say, around two or so?”

“Sure, I can do that. We’ll be by around then.”

“Thanks, Rook. See you then.”

He headed back down the stairs and opened the secret book case, almost jumping out of his own skin as he found Alexis standing outside of it waiting for him. “So what’s the plan for the day, Andy?” she asked him. “The General throw a spanner into the works like I expected her to?”

“She wants to take more time to search the plane, so we’re going to pick up Mali from the base, and we can pick up Melody right after that.”

“You know I’m not thrilled about her joining the house, right?” Alexis said. “I mean, I get that Piper’s the make-or-break decision, and she’s like you in that she believes in second chances.”

“You make it sound like that’s a bad thing. Lex.”

“If it were up to me, I’d throw the bitch in a hole and take my sweet ass time filling in the dirt on top of her,” Alexis grumbled. “But if Piper can suck it up and allow her in, who the hell am I to tell that girl she’s in the wrong, you know? I guess I’ll just be the paranoid bitch in the house, and maybe I’ll get lucky and you’ll show me that second chances don’t always bite people in the ass.”

“Let’s hope, because the last thing I want is to have bodyguards squaring off,” he said, sliding an arm around Alexis’s neck, pulling her in for a hug even as she laughed and shoved him back moments later.

“So, you and me and who’s the third going to the base?”

“We’re going to take two cars, so that means you driving one and Niko driving the other. Emily wants to be there for Mali, considering she’s the person Mali’s spoken to the most, and there’s no way we’re going to take on Melody without Piper getting a chance to set down the terms beforehand,” Andy said as the two of them headed down to the ground floor. “I know Melody said she’ll go along with whatever Piper’s going to put in front of her, but I think we want to be sure. The last thing I want is Melody being massively unhappy here.”

“You’re worried about her being unhappy,” Alexis laughed, shaking her head as they headed out towards the back yard. “What time are we supposed to be at the base?”

“Two-ish.”

“Okay, then I’ll relay the plan to Niko and we’ll get everything ready.”

Andy had the luxury of an hour or so to himself before they gathered up to head to the base and he did something he hadn’t done enough as of late – he spent it playing with his two cats. The two of them had gotten ahold of a tennis ball and were whipping it down the hallways, chasing after one another with reckless abandonment. Neither cat had gotten a firm grasp on how to move on wood floors, so the two had a tendency to slide into one another when running around corners. Andy was tormenting the two of them with a laser pointer when he saw Emily come around the corner, smiling as she tapped the watch on her wrist.

The drive over to the base was perfectly normal, what with New Eden still being on relatively high alert. Until the New Daughters of the Revolution were entirely a solved problem, there was going to be more tension and less peace on the streets. They were let onto the base and allowed to put their cars close to the building that housed the large structure where women were being given the serum before being sent out to get paired up with people.

Everything had seemed very slapdash when they’d first seen it, but now it was being done with complete precision, and trucks were arriving and leaving every hour on the hour. Emily had seemed a little bit nervous on the car ride over, and just as they were pulling into the parking lot, she told Andy why, her voice tentative and cautious, something rather unlike her.

“Andrew, there’s something I need to tell you, but I don’t want you to be cross with me, even though you might have rights to be,” she said as they were getting out of the car.

“Good lord, Em,” Andy chuckled. “What level of upset should I expect to be here?”

“Nothing too severe, I hope, my love,” she said with a smile that revealed just exactly how nervous she was at that moment. “You remember how Mali said she didn’t want to speak to you until she’d been imprinted?”

“I do recall that, Emily, and I said that while I thought it was odd, I would respect it, since she was still rather in her cups in grief.”

“That’s specifically what I needed to talk to you about before we go in there, Andrew,” Emily said, holding onto his right hand with both of hers. “So there’s a theory going around right now that if the dose of the serum is… what’s the word Mali used… overclocked? If they overdo the dosage somewhat of the serum, it has a good chance to activate the regeneration and restoration process, so she’s going to ask them to give her a double dose of the serum.”

“That sounds… a little risky.”

“It will be, but not for you, or any of us, just for her. So as part of this, she would like you, and the rest of the family, never to talk to her about her previous partner who died earlier this year.”

Andy squinted a little with a frown on his face. “Never talk to her about it? That seems like a very stiff cocktail for grief to sit in and take very rough hold within her mind and soul.”

“That’s just it, Andrew,” Emily said, looking up at him with those soft blue eyes that were so kindly imploring. “If it actually works, it stands a chance of removing all memories of him from her brain, and it will be as if he never existed. She will have healed away that very dark trauma.”

“Whoa there,” Andy said, putting his hands up. “Didn’t you ever see ‘Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind’? That certainly doesn’t sound at all healthy to me, simply losing such a large chunk of her memories. You said that they were childhood sweethearts, didn’t you?”

“She’s the one taking the risk, Andrew. All she’s asking you is to respect her choice in the matter, and if she never brings up her late fiancé, none of us will either. I know how much you prefer to run guns blazing into any trouble you come across, but this is something that must be handled with delicacy and should not be taken lightly.” Emily had such an earnest expression on her face that Andy knew he wasn’t going to be able to say no in the end, but he wanted to be sure she understood the risks.

“Alright, Em. Alright. Since this is what she wants, I won’t stand in the way of that, but if we start to see any signs of things going sideways, you must promise me that we’ll get her back safely here to the base as quickly as possible so that they can try and get her to work through whatever the serum will have done to her. I think that’s a fair compromise, don’t you?”

“That is absolutely fair, Andrew, and thank you for not being cross with me about holding back on this for up to the last possible moment,” Emily said, giving him a hug that sort of drained the nervousness out of her. “I was trying to be all British and stoic and not let it get to me, but it’s been an immense amount of pressure on my conscience. I wanted her to be welcomed here with open arms, and she had been through such an unbelievable amount of tragedy. She chose this and she chose you, and I knew that you were what she wanted and I just, I suppose I feared that such a brave choice might frighten you. You’re a very brave man when it comes to your own decisions, but you’re still…” She looked as if she was very carefully selecting her words. “You have a tendency to still want to protect all of us, Andrew, and I know you do that with the best intentions, and I try to look at it as a noble thing, your instinct to want to protect not only the women in your life but your friends also. But this is one time where I was worried that your sense of chivalry might get the best of you, and you might confuse doing the right thing with doing the correct thing.”

“The minute you’re telling a woman what she can and can’t do, Em, you’ve stopped being chivalrous and started being an asshole,” Andy chuckled. “I mostly just wanted to make sure she understood the risks she was taking, and how that if it starts to crumble, it won’t be something we can put back in the box again.”

“Trying is all anyone can ask of you, Andrew.” They headed to one of the side doors of the building rather than going through the main gate where the trucks were pulling in and out of. “Hello, love, we’re here to pick up two lovely ladies, Miss Mali Merrick and Miss Melody Park,” Emily said to the airwoman in fatigues behind the counter who looked practically giddy.

“Of course, Miss Stevens, we should be ready for you in just a few moments, but is it alright if I were to ask you for a selfie and an autograph? I was such a huge fan of Dahlia Hairtrigger, and she meant the world to me growing up,” the airwoman whose name tag read ‘Washington’ asked.

“Not a problem of any sort, dear. In fact, Andrew can even take the picture for us, can’t he?” Emily said as she took the phone from the airwoman’s hands and handed it to Andy, who immediately started to get it lined up. Andy took a handful of pictures and then handed them back to the airwoman for her to review while Emily had taken a card from her pocket and was fishing a pen out of her purse. “What’s your first name, my love?”

“Andrea, ma’am.” Andrea glanced over to Niko, technically a superior officer even if she was out of uniform, with a bit of embarrassment. “Sorry ma’am, they should be ready for you shortly. Miss Merrick arrived just a few minutes ago, and Miss Park will be here within the hour.”

“It’s okay, airman,” Niko chuckled. “You don’t see me busting your balls over this, do you?”

“No, ma’am,” Washington replied. “Thank you, ma’am.”

Emily finished signing the card for the desk officer and then slid it over to her. “Thank you for being a fan. I’m certain you’ll go on to do great things and make Dahlia proud.”

A moment or so later, a familiar face came through the doors to greet them. “Hey Charlotte,” Andy said to her.

“Good to see you again, Doc,” Piper added.

“Bonjour, mes amis,” Dr. Charlotte Varma said to them with a soft smile. “This way, please? Mali should be ready for you in about five minutes or so.”

As they stepped out of the waiting room and started walking down a long hallway, Alexis moved up next to Emily, whispering low enough that Andy could just barely hear them. “Am I going to have to get used to that all the time? People asking for autographs and photos?”

“Quite often, I’m afraid,” Emily whispered back. “It’s been nice not having to worry about that while we’ve been here in New Eden, but now that the world is getting back to normal, I expect at least some of that element of my life will return.”

“I’ll try not to bitch about it too much in front of you,” Alexis joked.

“Both I and my therapist will thank you for that.”

“Having Doctor Merriweather here has been a godsend for us, Andrew,” Charlotte told him as they moved into a small antechamber with a bed in the corner. “She’s made so much headway in getting the Quaranteam serum to work for gays and trans people, in addition to helping us make the reassignment solution a little more palatable. I understand you had a hand in getting all that worked out, so thank you for that.”

“I just connected a handful of people to one another, Charlotte. That’s all. I didn’t know we’d be running into you, otherwise I’m sure Asha would’ve said to give you her best,” he said with a smile. “She may like to pretend like she doesn’t like having you around, but I think she’s secretly very happy you swing by once every couple of weeks just to check up on her.”

“Yes, well, mothers can’t be too overprotective of their daughters,” she said, taking her buzzing phone out of her pocket. “One moment, please.” She lifted her glasses up off her eyes so she could read off her phone clearly before tucking it away. “Miss Stevens? Miss Merrick is just next door, and she wanted to speak to you for a minute or two before she came in for imprinting, if you don’t mind.”

“Not at all. Just through there?” Emily asked, as she pointed to a door on the far side of the room.

“Yes. It’s unlocked. Just go through and you can come back in and get down to brass tacks whenever she’s ready. I will leave you alone in here, and we will come back to get you in an hour or two for Miss Park once she’s done with processing.”

“Won’t be a skosh.” Emily moved to step through the door into the next room, closing it behind her.

“What kind of processing is Miss Park going through?” Niko asked. “I haven’t been working around the reassignment area much, so I don’t know the standard protocol for what we’re doing with the NDR’s that are being reassigned. I imagine you’d know pretty well, considering you’re sharing your fella with one.”

“Mmmm. Dr. DeMarco is something of a special case, simply because of her rather violent actions, so she’s not being allowed off base until Linda feels safe with her, and I imagine that will be at least a few months,” Charlotte said, tapping her fingertips against her phone’s screen, sending a message to someone. “It’s mostly a basic health and wellness check, as well as a thorough screening for weapons. So far, all the members of the NDR have been entirely peaceful and happy in getting reassigned, but that isn’t to say that some won’t be. Excuse me, I have to go tend to a patient. As soon as Miss Merrick comes in, Andy, you’re welcome to get her imprinted and once that’s done, if some of you want to take her home early before you move on to Miss Park, that would also be fine.”

“Yeah, I think me and Em will take Mali home and leave you, Piper and Lexi here to handle Melody,” Niko said to Andy, as Charlotte exited the room through the door they’d come in through. “I figure that’s a fair enough split, don’t you think?”

“I’m good with it if you all are,” he told the amazing group of women he had around him.

“I want to make sure Melody’s not going to try anything,” Alexis said. “And I know Piper wants to have a few words with her before you pull the trigger.”

Piper grinned, rolling her eyes a little. “I just want to make sure she knows what she’s getting into with us, and doesn’t think we’re going to go easy on her, even as we are letting her in.”

The door opened again and Emily peeked her head out. “Andrew? I think we’re just about ready if you are. Remember, please don’t say a word, and don’t expect her to say a word until after she’s woken up tomorrow, alright?”

Andy nodded and moved to sit down on the edge of the bed. They hadn’t really settled how they were going to go about getting Mali paired, but he assumed she and Emily had talked about it during their conversation as Emily moved over to sit next to him, reaching down to unbutton his jeans as Mali entered the room and he got his first look of her in person.

Mali Merrick was a truly gorgeous woman from Wales, with a very rounded, almost cherubic face with rosy cheeks. She was in her early thirties, although she looked as though she could easily be half a decade in either direction. Her dark brown hair hung down to her collarbone and was parted almost in the middle of her head. She was busty, probably D cup, although it fit her frame perfectly. She was dressed in a simple one-piece dress made from a very busy pattern and a strappy thin leather belt around her waist. Her lips were a delicate shade of pink and her brown eyes looked like they were doing their best to remain stoic and unflinching. She offered Andy a shy little smile before starting to walk over towards them.

Andy knew the next few minutes were going to be some of the hardest he’d ever endured, because he strongly wanted to talk to Mali, make sure this was what she wanted, but the smile seemed to widen a little bit as she leaned in and kissed him softly for a moment. It was a trepidatious first kiss, but he could feel Mali take in a deep breath and then try again, kissing him a bit more openly now, selling herself as well as him on her dedication to this. However he might have felt about the kiss, Mali seemed focused on her plan as she moved down to kneel before him, pushing his legs apart.

“I know this will be trying, Andrew,” Emily whispered into his ear, “but tomorrow, you and she will be able to start fresh. So just let her get imprinted as easily as you can.”

Mali’s face still seemed a little nervous, but the smile on her face had grown a little playful now, as if maybe she was trying to convince herself this was some sort of game. She reached into his pants and pulled out his cock, bringing her right hand to tap her fingers to her mouth, miming surprise at the size of his shaft, which made him chuckle a little.

Piper moved to sit down on the other side of him as Alexis and Niko moved to sit down on the ground behind Mali, just to be prepared for what was coming next.

She started to press her lips to the tip of his shaft and he could tell when the droplet of precum emerged from his tip and hit her tongue because it was the first time she’d made a noise since entering the room, a throaty moan of orgasm blowing across his cock as Lexi and Niko pressed a hand each to keep her from falling backwards, as the imprinting process was getting started. There were two orgasms a person got when they were being imprinted, one at the first taste of sexual fluid and the other with the first release.

A moment or two later, Mali turned her brown eyes up to look at him imploringly, an expression that could easily be misread as fear but one that Andy had seen enough to know was awe. Over the past year, he’d talked to all of his partners about their sexual histories before him, and all of them confessed that whatever else the Quaranteam serum had done, it had certainly ensured that the orgasms they had together were on a level of intensity they hadn’t even considered beforehand. So, when Mali’s mouth descended down hard over his cock, he knew why.

She was chasing the rush.

Andy wasn’t sure what to do with his hands, so he was glad when he felt Emily taking hold of one and Piper taking hold of the other, both reassuring him wordlessly that he was doing the right thing, as Mali dove down until her lips were nearly at the base of his dick, her cheeks puffing out a little bit.

He’d gotten more blowjobs over the last few months than he had probably over the rest of his entire life beforehand, but Mali’s tempo was unlike anyone else in the house, and she was taking her time keeping his cock inside of her mouth, her tongue basting his shaft relentlessly.

Andy didn’t want to put off a poor first showing, but Mali grabbed the tops of his thighs with each hand and started thrusting her face down faster and faster. Her breath was hot on his flesh, and she was moaning each time she pulled her face back. She wasn’t giving him much time to recover in between facial dives and before he knew it, he was nearing his release.

It had taken him a while to break himself of the tendency to let his partners know he was about to cum in their mouths, because frankly that was the point, and with the tip of his cock nearly pressed against the back of her throat, Andy released a heavy load into her mouth, setting off another overwhelming orgasm in Mali’s body as the imprinting process took full hold of her body.

Mali was still shaking and trembling in the orgasm as Lexi and Niko moved to lay her on her back. She was mumbling “imprinting” over and over again, but it was much faster than it normally was, and every third or fourth time the word was stuttered and a little slurred.

“Well,” Andy sighed. “It looks like the double dose is having some kind of effect. Let’s hope it doesn’t go south on us.”

“You should probably take a quick shower,” Niko said. “So, while you’re doing that, I’ll borrow Lexi to help me and Em get Mali to the car.”

“Yeah, if he’s not safe here, he’s not safe anywhere. And besides, Piper can watch him while he showers.”

“I’m entirely capable of taking a shower all by myself, ladies.” The way the girls laughed at him made him give them back a snarky frown. “Oh, I’ll remember that,” he teased, rolling his eyes, as Piper helped him back to his feet while he pulled his pants back up. “Take good care of her, Em. Tomorrow she and I can have our first real conversation.”

“C’mon, loverboy,” Piper said, sliding her arm around his waist. “Let’s get you washed off before we go see danger girl…”