While You Sleep

"I'd put a bullet in your forehead before you got close enough to..." before he could finish the sentence Liz and Polly were laughing so loud he couldn't finish it.

"You certainly are serious about your job," laughed Carmella.

For the rest of the trip into town it was like being in a weird three-way. Carmella did everything she could to get as close to Rick as possible. I fumed at how obvious and whorish she was, getting angrier and angrier but keeping my composure. Rick, on the other hand, far more than the rest of the security detail, went out of his way to make sure I was safe.

I was also angry because he never once looked at me. He looked her right in the eyes when he spoke to her. He looked at her huge boobs when she stuck them in his face and he spoke to her. He never once looked me in the eye. If I stood directly in front of him, he looked away. It was like trees, walls and even his God damned shoes were more interesting than I was.

And it was all a game to Carmella. On the way back, she showed off a little bit. "Did you see the guy on the roof in the marketplace?" she asked.

"The one with the fishing rod or the one hanging the clothes out to dry?" he asked.

"What were they wearing?" she asked.

"Fishing rod guy wore jeans and a plaid shirt," he said. "Laundry guy wore an old whitish looking robe."

"My God, you notice everything don't you?" she smiled.

"I have to see everything that might be a danger..." he began.

"What color are my eyes?" she asked.

"Hazel with a little bit of blue on the outsides," he said without hesitation. She didn't hesitate either.

"What color is my bra?" she asked.

"Black," he said. This time it was Carmella's turn to laugh.

"I'm glad you noticed," she smirked. "And looking at my lingerie isn't part of your job like protecting Miss Cameron. So you did that on your own. If you want to see any more of my underthings, or what goes into them, you can just..."

"Carmella," hissed Beth. "Sometimes you go too far."

"And sometimes, I go just far enough," said Carmella. She tapped the flustered Rick on his hand.

"The ball is in your court," she said smiling. "You don't have to worry about your charge, she has a boyfriend. So anytime you're not protecting her...How exactly does that work? Do you have time off or are you working around the clock?"

Before Rick could answer, the limo stopped and we were back at the bungalow. I looked at him to see what his reaction was but he was already out of the car checking to make sure everything was okay. I looked towards Carmella and she was smiling and nodding her head. She wasn't paying me any attention.

Polly was already walking towards the bungalow with Beth right behind her.

"I know that look," said Liz. "You did say that you weren't interested, remember?"

"I hate that bitch," I said quietly.

"Like looking into a mirror, huh?" she said.

"I'm not like that," I hissed.

"Well maybe she is a bit more, direct about it. Maybe she's a bit more obvious, but some men like that. I think they see it as being honest. It's kind of flattering. But in the end you and Carmella are pretty much the same. Once you figure out what you want, you go right after it and you usually get it," smiled Liz.

"Then why does it feel like I'm losing?" I asked.

"It's probably because you're sitting your ass on the bench watching the game instead of playing it," said Liz. "This isn't a game that you're used to playing. You're kind of used to just showing up, batting your big pretty eyes and having the men chase after you. Doing the chasing might not be something you're good at," she said.

"So maybe I have to get him to chase me," I smiled.

"Won't happen," spat one of the female agents.

"Not in this lifetime," said the other. "Carmella probably picked up on that. It's probably why she's going in with all guns blazing."

"And she does have an advantage over you," said the first agent again.

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"Rick is a very good agent," she said. "He takes his job really God damned serious. He's already down on women, but he sees you as "WORK," first. Before he notices you as a woman, you're the job. So it's weird because he's already not interested, but before he even sees you as something he's not interested in, he has to protect you."

"Right," said the other woman. "Carmella only has to leap one small hurdle to get him. You have to scale a wall to even get to the hurdle."

"But cheer up, Carmella only stays with a guy for a couple of weeks before she moves on," said the first agent.

"How do you know that?" I asked.

The two agents and Liz all stared at me like I had two heads. "Honey, you have to start reading those state department briefings," said Liz. "She's Carmella Bingham. She's the British prime minister's niece. She's kind of the British version of you. She's left a trail of boyfriends all over the fucking world. She's had artists and rock stars and athletes. If you can name it, she's fucked it and left it. A U.S. Secret Service agent would be something new for her."

"Not mine," I hissed. The two female agents looked at each other and smiled.

"When did he become yours?" asked Liz.

"I don't know," I said. "And I'm pretty sure that he doesn't know it yet. Maybe it was on the plane when he was asleep and every time one of his eyes would pop open, he'd look for me. Shit, not even my dad is that concerned with making sure I'm okay."

"That's our job," said one of the agents.

"Nope, there's a connection. I'm pretty sure of it," I said. "So why does he hate women? Is it all women or are we just bitches because one woman in particular pissed him off?"

"Oh, we'd better go inside for this one," said the agent. "This is going to take a little while to tell."

Once we got inside the bungalow, the four of us gathered in my room while the two Brits napped and Polly went off to prepare for our trip into town for the festival that evening. The biggest part of the festival would be two nights from then. But Polly had to participate in the opening of the festival.

The two agents, Gail and Patty, actually got relaxed. I could tell the difference because even though they still wore their holstered guns, they'd taken off their suit jackets.

Patty started telling me everything she knew about Rick.

"Okay, the reason he hates women is...well you were right. It's all because of one woman. He's kind of...the opposite of what people think you are ma'am. He was a hot shot high school quarterback. He was so good that he got recruited by a lot of colleges. He did a lot of those college visits where the schools go out and try to spoil the shit out of you for a weekend to try to convince you to go their school."

"Anyway the U of M had something to offer that interested him right away," said Patty.

"Let me guess," I said. "They offered him the starting quarterback's job his first year, right."

"Not even close," said Patty. "He flipped over something the football team didn't even offer him."

"Are you about to tell me that he went to college for the educational benefits?" I laughed.

"No ma'am," said Patty. "He went for the benefits alright. And for an eighteen year old boy, I'm sure he got an education, but he picked that school because he went crazy over a girl. And she wasn't just any girl either. She'd just been selected as Miss Michigan and went on to compete in the Miss America pageant. It was a weird relationship."

"How so?" I asked.

"Well she's older than HE is for one thing," said Gail.

"That's not really very unusual anymore," I said.

"There's more to the story," said Patty.

"But wait you said she was Miss America and he was a football player," I said. "Did he get hurt? Why didn't he become a pro?"

"He quit," said Patty. "A few months after the Miss America pageant fiasco, she got pregnant. He quit the team."

"He what?" I asked in shock. "But there had to be a way for them to..."

"That's what he did," said Patty. "He was going to join the army, but instead he was selected by the service. They paid the rest of his college expenses and gave him a salary. He's done very well and is a great agent. Unfortunately, life at home wasn't quite as good. She cheated on him and he's been trying to divorce her."

"How long has he been trying to get away from her?" I asked.

"About three years," said Patty. "She's fighting it tooth and nail and of course, with him often being out of town on extended leaves hasn't helped."

"Okay, so he just needs better, more dedicated lawyers and a way to cut through some red tape. Half of the marriages out there end up in divorces. That shouldn't make him hate women," I said. "It should just make him hate his wife."

"Ma'am, you still don't get it. He's the kind of man who puts his all into everything he does. He loved that woman with everything he had to give and in the end, she did something he could never forgive and she keeps on doing it. Plus, there's the fact that she's the ONLY woman he's ever been with. It's kind of a mess."

"It's so sad," I said. "I can almost feel his pain."

* * * * * *

Rick

For the first time that I can remember, I really wasn't happy with an assignment. I was busting my ass but I seemed to be the only one who had a bad vibe about this place. I guess I was so used to going into a place and scouting for possible problems that I saw them everywhere. Normally, when my team came into a location, we had to cover every possible vantage point where a crazy would try to attack from. And while we couldn't secure an entire city, that's impossible, we did try to make sure that the corridors our charges would use were as secure as possible.

In this case, since we were on supposedly friendly soil and this mission wasn't political or even diplomatic in nature, everyone seemed to be relaxing. Agent May seemed to be constantly riding my ass. But he was telling me to relax on one hand and telling me I needed to shave on the other.

The message I seemed to be getting from him was that security wasn't a priority here but looking good was. That made no sense. The only good thing about the whole situation was that at least he'd allowed me to pick the shift that I wanted to work. I'd decided to work the night shift for a couple of reasons. The first was that it gave me the days to either sleep or handle personal business.

We had access to the palace and they had Wi Fi there so it gave me the ability to contact my lawyer. Even if the divorce didn't go through, I was now dead set on getting custody of my daughter. I couldn't leave her with Danielle any more.

The second reason I preferred to work nights was that it got me away from Miss Cameron. The incident with her the other day, telling May to leave me alone was embarrassing. I had the other agents making all kinds of jokes at my expense over her looking out for me. A good agent should be anonymous enough to stand right in the room and not draw any kind of attention. Somehow, she'd noticed me, which would only hinder me from doing my job. She and some of her friends had actually started talking to me, which the other agents also found noteworthy.

"Hey Rick, exactly how big are that English girls tits," I'd been asked a couple of times. "I heard she stuck them right in your face."

"Ah, don't even think about it," said another. "Rick only has eyes for the Cameron women."

The bad thing about it was that it was at least partially true. I'd seen Millicent Cameron around the White House lots of times before this assignment. Usually it was in passing and from a distance. She tended to distance herself, not only from politics, but from her parents so that anything she did didn't reflect badly on them.

She was very outspoken on several issues and her stand on things like the environment, the average person's carbon footprint and women's issues differed strongly from her father's political party's views.

The problem was that this was the first time that I'd actually been in close proximity to her and I hated to admit it, but I was very attracted to her. Pictures in the newspaper or seeing her on TV doesn't convey the nuances she has that you can only experience in person. Her hair glows it's so blond. And her breasts, while not in the same league as that insane Carmella Bingham's, were very full and very beautiful.

Millicent Cameron is probably the most beautiful woman I've ever seen and she isn't very standoffish or aloof like some women are. When I watched her conversations with both her assistant and the princess and even the two female agents, she spoke to all of them the same way; like they were all just people. A lot of people in the political arena tend to treat people as if their value came from their rank or their position.

That means that to a certain extent, they tended to talk down to anyone who wasn't a political power. Miss Cameron didn't do that at all. She had several habits that she did when she thought no one was looking that endeared her to me all the more. She had a way of biting her bottom lip when she concentrated on a problem that made me just want to...

That was the problem. I should never think about her like that. My job was to protect her; nothing more and nothing less.

I didn't like Agent May's attitude on how we did things. It was simply too lax. He'd even told me that I should go into town for a drink. I wasn't supposed to be on duty until midnight and he wanted me to, in his words, get the stick out of my ass. His theory was that my agitation and unease would spread through the others and make things unpleasant for everyone.

I also didn't like Prince Gregor one fucking bit. He'd been very open and very accommodating but I didn't trust that bastard as far as I could throw him. He seemed like the type of prince who can't wait for his father to die, to take power. He seemed like the type to seize power sooner rather than later. It just felt to me that the entire country was a powder keg and I didn't want Millicent here when it blew.

There was also a group of terrorists or something who, from time to time, staged raids or demonstrations throughout the country. The army seemed to keep them in check, but I couldn't count on them not to try something during the festival in two days. I also didn't like the idea of Millicent just wandering around town with only a couple of agents besides Gail and Patty to watch her. Gail and Patty were excellent agents but...

Okay, maybe my thoughts in that area weren't very professional. The fact of the matter was that if Gail and Patty were Stallone and Schwarzenegger, I still wouldn't trust them to protect her. I don't think I trusted anyone beside me to handle it.

Prince Gregor was politically some sort of throwback. He favored far stricter adherence to the regions religious tenets. The princess and their father were more moderate and more open to modernizing the country and its laws. It would be interesting to see how things were in this country in twenty years.

One thing that I found interesting was that the terrorists in the region seemed to have views that were very similar to Gregor's. I could foresee a day that he might reach out to them when he took over power.

While I was here, I'd made a very thorough study of the geography of the country. The city that we were in, held no strategic importance. It had simply been a very successful trade city. A large part of that importance was that the city was very close to the border. In fact, the bungalow that Millicent slept in was only five miles as the crow flies from the border with Russia.

I'd gone into the palace and used Google earth to map out my route to the Russian border. It was always a good thing to have an escape route. It seemed funny. During my father and grandfather's time in the military service, they'd fought the Russians or at least helped to maintain the status quo between us and them. But now, we had diplomatic relationships and alliances that made the Russians my best hope in the event of anything going wrong.

I did want to relax a bit though and maybe May's suggestion about going out for a drink wasn't a bad idea. I don't actually drink, but getting away and just kicking back couldn't be a bad idea. I didn't need any more sleep. Even after being awakened by May to go into town on that babysitting run, I'd come back to have a couple of more hours of sack time.

I caught a ride with some of the palace workers who told me about a quiet bar in the town. I staked out a small booth in the back of the place and took out my notebook to write. I sat there watching the locals wander in and out. They had an incredible capacity for alcohol. There was one farmer who seemed to come in about every half hour or so. And the liquor they served, I'd heard from other agents was some kind of extremely potent local whiskey. I'm not sure I'd be able to walk let alone run a tractor with that amount of liquor in me.

I'd taken several pretty good stabs at a poem, when she walked in. It was only about six thirty p.m. local time and I wasn't due to report until about eleven thirty for my midnight until eight a.m. shift.

"Would you mind it terribly if I were to sit down with you?" she asked. I don't know what it is about the British. We speak the same words except for regional slang and inflection but somehow it just seemed to sound so different. Looking at her standing there in front of me, I got the impression that she was waiting for me to tell her it was okay to sit at the table.

"It's fine," I said. "Have a seat."

"Are you busy?" she asked.

"I was just jotting down a few lines in my notebook," I said.

"Oh, well now that I'm here, you don't have to do that anymore," she said smiling.

"I actually like to write," I said. "It gives me a chance to think about and reflect on what's going on and how I feel."

"Oh," she said. "I was really hoping to get your opinion on something."

"Me? Why would you want my opinion?" I asked. I didn't trust her so I started the micro recorder in my jacket pocket just in case she accused me of something.

"Well, you're a man," she gushed. "You're an attractive young man. And sometimes there are cultural differences between us. Even though you're no longer our children and our relationship is still more like we're cousins now, there are simply... differences and I wouldn't want to miss-step."

"How are we cousins?" I asked.

"I mean America and Britain, not us specifically," she smiled. I shrugged my shoulders.

"If you're asking me about cars, I can really only tell you about American cars...wait are there any British cars left? Aston Martin and Jaguar are both..."

"I wasn't asking you about cars," she interrupted. "Next week, I'm going to a party in New York at a club. It's one of those jeans and T-shirt, dance and get funky kind of parties. What do you think of my shirt?"

She pulled her jacket open and my eyes opened wider than I thought possible. Carmella Bingham is no shrinking violet. She's a pretty English woman. Perhaps a bit thicker in the waistline than I'd prefer but her attributes were known world-wide.

Beneath her coat, Carmella had on a pair of jeans that were so tight it looked like they'd been panted on. She was wearing a T-shirt, if that was what you'd call it. Her hands held the sides of the shirt together. The shirt was very thin. It was so thin in fact that I could see the blue lines of veins in her huge pale breasts. She obviously wasn't wearing a bra. With her holding the T-shirt together I was able to read it. It read "Fuck Me." I think it was meant, not as an invitation, but the expressive way. But when she let go of the T-shirt and it opened, I was so busy staring at her huge heaving udders that I couldn't form rational thoughts. As she breathed, the thin material of the shirt sounded almost as if it was tearing even more. It was simply unable to contain her boobs.