Subject:  “Full Engagement -- Broken Engagement” |
Author:
Dancer
|
[
Next Thread |
Previous Thread |
Next Message |
Previous Message
]
Date Posted: 21:53:30 07/27/02 Sat
Title: “Full Engagement -- Broken Engagement”
Author: Dancer (dancersgrace@mail.com)
Rating: PG-13, Romance (H/M), Humor
Full Engagement -- Broken Engagement
Renee was getting impatient. It was nearly quarter to seven and Harm had yet to even call her. As she pulled her car off the main road, she wondered what in the world could be keeping “her Commander” now. They were supposed to be at the rehearsal dinner by seven-thirty and she simply refused to be late.
The whole idea that Mac should actually invite her to the wedding, let alone ask her to supervise the videotaping was still a little hard for her to get used to, but Harm said she really meant it.
The small, suburban church was surrounded by a rather cozy parking lot out front with a slightly larger one out back. That’s where Renee was planning on having the generator truck pull in along with the craft service wagon for the union guys.
It wasn’t going to be much. Mac said she didn’t want a lot of fuss, so Renee had planned on a minimal crew – just twelve people including the boom operator. Of course, the teamsters would be separate. They always are.
Tonight, during the rehearsal, Renee was planning on picking out her sight lines. The camera operators would have to be in on it, of course, but she could pick up with them later. For now, it was enough to see how the train of bridesmaids would enter and stand and how the hell Mic was going to get all those officers into one room without it turning into a fight.
Bud was so cute in his dress uniform. Mess dress blue he called it. To Renee it looked like something out a headwaiter’s closet – all those buttons! To think that Harm had actually considered being in this thing!
It still struck her as strange that Admiral Cheggwidden had been so reluctant to stand in for Mac’s dad giving her away, but then again, she always thought he took this rank business too seriously.
As Renee pulled to a stop in the handicapped parking space out front, she could see the small crowd of attendants gathering outside the front door. All the women were on one side and all the men crowded on the other side just like some high school dance, and as Renee walked up to join them she could plainly hear a familiar voice exhorting the evening air with some sort of sports thing going on.
“So I come around him feigning with jabs and he ducks down to try and open my mid-section. That’s when I got him, “ Mic was reporting enthusiastically. “Right cross to the jaw. He never saw it coming.” Renee was standing in front of him staring blankly. “Just a bit of fun, Renee,” he said sheepishly. “I was telling this lot how I knocked out Ian McReiger for the Queensland Cup. Did a bit of boxing, you know.”
“Oh,” she replied distantly, “how --- manly of you.”
“Harm come with you?” Mic asked suddenly noticing she was alone.
“Isn’t he here?” she demanded impatiently.
“No, luv. Sorry.”
“He’s the one who’s going to be sorry,” she steamed. “He was supposed to be helping me with this thing, and I’ll bet he doesn’t even show.”
“Seems I’m having a bit of that myself,” Brumby replied. “It seems my bride is a bit late as well.”
As Renee took in this news about Mac, her mind began to weigh the possibilities carefully. “You don’t suppose…”
“Maybe they’re delayed at the office,” Mic suggested hopefully.
She folded her arms in front of her and began to tap her foot impatiently. “He better be at the office,” Renee warned. “One more word about Iceland and he’s going to be living there.”
******************************
Harm was slowly fanning across the smoldering pile of pine needles and assorted forest debris trying to bring forth a flame he could feed.
Speaking to his companion in a reasoned tone, he nodded toward the fallen tree trunk near him. “You can sit over here, you know.”
“I know,” she admitted reluctantly, “ but I was just trying to stay out of the draft.”
Harm smiled to himself. “You’re already in the service, Mac. They can’t draft you now.”
She rolled her eyes at him impatiently. “Very funny.”
“Come on, sit down,” he chuckled softly.
As Mac paced back and forth uneasily, she was scanning in all directions looking for some sign of civilization other than the disabled Humvee parked nearby. Aside from that cattle track they called a road, there was nothing around them for miles but trees. They hadn’t seen anything on the way in – not even power lines. She hadn’t seen anything on the way out but miles and miles of the same forest they were now stranded in.
“You worried?” Harm asked quietly.
“No,” she said trying to sound sincere. “They’re bound to come looking for us sooner or later.”
“Yeah. It’s too bad the phones don’t work down here.”
“I still think if we just hiked up over that ridge…”
Harm cut her off. “Mac, it’s too dark,” he insisted. “We’ll climb up there in the morning and see if we can get out.”
“In the morning …” Mac’s voice trailed off sadly.
Knowing what she was missing “back home”, Harm tried not to take her downcast attitude personally, but he couldn’t help wishing she’d try to enjoy his company a little, too.
As she made her way around the small circle they’d cleared for the fire, he turned his eyes up to meet her gaze, then dropped them back down. “We’re going to have trouble explaining this one, you know.”
“I don’t see why,” she said firmly. “After all, it was an accident.” The way he shifted his eyes around made him look guilty of something, but Mac couldn’t imagine what that would be. And then, somewhere in her mind, suspicion met circumstance. “Harm?” she said with a wary caution. “It was an accident, right?”
“What?”
“Driving off without the fuel can. That was an accident, wasn’t it?”
“Of course, it was, Mac,” he insisted angrily. “You don’t think I wanted to get us stranded out here in the middle of nowhere, do you?”
“I just don’t understand why we had to bring that thing,” Mac snorted in disgust glaring at the reluctant Humvee. “It gets zero miles-per-gallon.”
“Standard Marine transportation, Colonel,” Harm advised her firmly. “Colonel Makepeace said the country up there was pretty rough. A staff car wouldn’t make it.”
“If it was that bad, why didn’t they just take us up there in a chopper?”
“No LZ, Mac,” was his answer. “The woods up there are pretty thick.” Harm was finding her insistence on re-hashing the gloomier aspects of their predicament personally depressing. He was doing the best he could for her, but coming up short on all counts, it seemed. Although he continued to fan at the smoke, even his fire wasn’t starting.
Finally, as if she couldn’t think of anything else to do, Mac reluctantly sat down on the log not too far from Harm, and let out a discouraging sigh. “I guess there’s nothing else to do but make the best of it,” she said glumly.
“Well, I hope it’s better than that,” Harm offered sarcastically. “You make it sound like dental surgery.”
“I’m sorry, Harm,” she said sweetly in response to the slightly injured tone in his voice. “I didn’t mean it like that.”
He tipped his head sharply to one side in a kind of half-shrug. “I guess if you were going to be stranded,” he began evenly, “you’d rather be out here with somebody else.”
“Not necessarily,” she replied.
When he turned to see her face, their eyes met for the first time in several hours. The look that passed between them went through several stages of development finally settling somewhere between mutual attraction and outright danger. It ended when Mac suddenly exclaimed, “Harm, look!”
Following the direction of her gaze, he looked down to find that in the small collection of needles and dry leaves in front of him, what had become a warm, bright glow had now turned into flame.
To be continued...
[
Next Thread |
Previous Thread |
Next Message |
Previous Message
]
| |
Feedback: 