What You See is What You Get

"Do you like? She lay on her stomach, her bare ass staring at everyone with seemingly a single strand of string passing between her butt cheeks. She untied the back of her top and asked me to rub sunblock on her back, her ass and her legs.

"I don't know who's watching you more, the guys or the girls."

We flew back to San Jose and life settled into normalcy. We were both busy. The house was finished. Adam and I had tested all of the features. He had installed wireless cameras in the trees and along the road to capture any intrusion. I could watch from home or my office space. The cameras were motion sensitive. All I saw were deer browsing. It was nice to know everything worked. It was locked up unless I was there. Cari would meet me there when she could. Life was good.

Winter came and the rain fell. I lit the fireplace to offset the clouds that seemed to be just above the roof. The power went off and stayed off. My generator kicked in and the lights and systems came back on. It wasn't the first time. It was a given if you live so remotely.

The next month, Cari was coming for the weekend. We were spending more and more time together. I got a beep from the security system. I looked at it on my iPad and saw Cari's SUV come up the road. These cameras were good.

She splashed up the road and parked in the second stall of the garage. I locked the place up tight after that. We had a quiet dinner, watched something unremarkable on one of the streaming services and went to bed early.

Sometime in the night. I awoke to the beep beep beep of the security system. I got up to see what was going on. I was anticipating another deer. Instead I got a SUV slowly coming up the road. I called Adam, even if it was the middle of the night.

"I've got a car on the road."

"Hold on." He put the phone down for a moment and came back in a flash. "I see it. I can't see the license plate from this angle. The next camera up the road should have a view of it. I can run the plate against DMV to find out whose vehicle it is." I knew he was hacking his way in but it was for a good cause as long as he didn't get caught.

The house was black. The fire had died and all the lights were out. I dressed warmly, letting Cari sleep for now. Time crawled as the car slowly inched forward.

"Got the plate. I'll run it." He came back two minutes later. "It's bogus. The plate belongs to a guy in Costa Mesa, 400 miles away. His vehicle is a car, not a SUV. Somebody stole his plate, probably his front one and he's not noticed it's gone. This is no lost driver."

The car stopped. Two men got out. The cameras were color and infrared, so they shone brightly. They put on night vision goggles and split up, coming at the house from different angles.

I woke Cari and had her dress.

"There are two men outside, coming up the road."

Both men had reached the house. They first tried the front door. How do you open a door with no visible lock? Adam was good, very good. Only an electronic key would open it. Next they circled around the house, looking for other entry points. There weren't any. Rolling shutters covered every first floor window. The garage door would withstand a direct ramming by a vehicle. You could see their frustration build as they tried every alternative. They moved to the deck. It was ten feet in the air close to the house and then the land slopes down quickly. It was cantilevered over the supporting beams. Even if you climbed one of the beams, you couldn't get up on the deck. You'd need a ladder. A big ladder. They retreated to their car and left.

"What is going on?"

"I wish I knew. My first thought is about Katrin. Someone may still be looking for something. They didn't find it with her. Maybe they think I have what they want."

Later, I called my FBI contact to update her. Marilyn Sears called me back. "Quite a bit of excitement, there."

"I could live without any more excitement in my life."

"What do they they want? What do they think you have? This Katrin thing has gone on for three years. She's been gone for months. This is baffling," Marilyn said.

"Tell me. I draw a complete blank," I responded.

Cari and I hit a rough patch in our relationship. We were both busy but my life certainly wasn't exciting other than the intruder thing. I think she wanted more but I couldn't be sure, so I decided to push some. Over dinner I asked her, "What do you want that you're not getting, either from me or otherwise?"

There was stunned silence followed by, "I'm bisexual and I find myself attracted to another person, a woman. I've not acted on it. She's a client who's married. We spend quite a bit of time together and the attraction seems mutual. I want to find out if we can be together."

"Do you want to pursue it?"

"Yes"

We had never committed to each other, but letting her go was difficult. I heard from her a couple of times, telling me it was going well. I missed her.

In time, I met another woman, a quality control specialist for Avondale recently recruited to her position. She amazingly had a sense of humor, a rarity in software development. She made me laugh, for which I was forever grateful. Laura was fairly tall, probably 5'8" or so, slim, with auburn hair and green eyes. She was striking, easily standing out in a male-dominated field. She was also very smart. I heard she put more than one employee in his place when he didn't hear no. We had been introduced as she was new to our group. We talked by phone, then she came to my office/live space. She was impressed with it, I invited her up to the house and to my surprise she accepted. The following Saturday was a rare winter's day with blue skies and little wind. We talked as I drove there. I climbed up the road until the house came into view.

"Wow!" was her exclamation.

I opened up everything, parking in the garage. We went upstairs and she walked from room to room, looking at the views and commenting on how everything went together.

"I hired a designer for both spaces. If it was just my taste it certainly wouldn't look like this"

She laughed and then we went out on the deck. You felt like you were floating in the sky, with a distant view on a nice day of the Pacific Ocean. It made the trip worthwhile just to see her expression.

"I'm sure not in DC anymore," Laura said with a smile. "Don't you worry about the place, maybe of break ins?"

I walked back inside and picked up my iPad and showed her Adam's software and hardware: cameras, shutters, reinforced doors, the works.

"Why?" was her question.

"I lived in the DC area as well. My then-wife and I had a home invasion. I think we survived only due to two missionaries coming to the door and seeing her sprawled on the floor unconscious with two men standing guard while two others trashed the place looking for something. We refurbished the house and sold it, then moved here. After that, I took this job, bought this house and remodeled the office space."

"No wonder you are obsessed with security. How's your ex?"

I looked at her for a long moment then simply said, "Dead. She disappeared in Boston and her body was found by a hiker months later."

"Oh no! I'm so sorry."

"She was there and then she wasn't followed by months of nothing. Then came the announcement of her death."

Laura came up to me and put her hand on my shoulder and looked me in the eye. "You went through hell. There's no understanding why bad things happen." Then she hugged me. I hugged her back and we held that moment for a long while. After that, I said we should be on the road before it got dark. Sitting in the car with me as we slowly drove down the road, she noticed a paint scrape on a tree trunk.

"Yours?" She asked with a smile, thinking I had scraped my car on the tree.

"That's another story," I told her in reply and told her of the intrusion.

"Why was the FBI involved?"

"That's yet another story," I explained. "The FBI first came to me after the home invasion. Katrin had been on their watch list because of suspicious behavior and association with other watch list people. Why? No one knew. Earlier this year I was awakened in the night by the alarm system. Two men were outside looking for a way in. As you've seen, good luck with that. They finally left, leaving that scrape on the tree as they tried to back down the road in the middle of the night. My contact there thinks someone or someones' are looking for something and not finding it, so they may be thinking I've got something."

By this point, we had driven down from the house to my office. Laura came in and we shared some wine with some fruit and cheese. We talked on and she told me of her life and how she ended up at Avondale.

"Stay with me," I said to her. She smiled and said, "I'd like that." I led her into the bedroom, undressed her and, after losing my clothes, lay in bed with her. We took our time, getting to know each other. We lay there, just touching and talking. She told me of her marriage and divorce, her fling with an attorney and her being alone since then. We made gentle love later, then fell asleep while spooning with me holding her. The next morning, I got up and made coffee, taking her a cup. She had just come out of the bathroom naked and I just took in her features. She was very pretty. I handed her the coffee and she took a sip, then smiled at me and said, "good morning."

We lay back on the bed, sitting up so we could drink our coffee.She was uncovered to the waist and her breasts stood out proudly, her nipples puckered and sticking out. She followed my gaze. "Do you like?" She said with a smile.

"More than like."

"I should go," she said. "I don't want to overstay my welcome."

"Come and take a shower with me." I had built a large shower with extra heads. I guided her in after it was warm.

She luxuriated in it. "This is awesome!"

I washed her from head to toe. It was fun. We played, splashing each other. Other than the hair on her head, there was not one hair on her body. She was sleek and lean. We toweled off, and I handed her a hair dryer for her long hair.

"Is there anything you haven't thought of?" She exclaimed. I helped her dry her hair, then we strolled naked into the kitchen and got more coffee. "This is fun," she said. "I'm glad I stayed."

"I'm glad you stayed as well. I want to do this more."

We kissed, hugged again as I marveled at how we just fit together. Reluctantly, I led her back to the bedroom and we got dressed. She wore her slacks from the previous day and wore one of my shirts. She picked up her underwear and top. "I really dislike wearing clothes two days in a row." I took her to brunch, it being Sunday. Talking was effortless. She just smiled at me. Laura became a regular part of my life. I enjoyed us, it just felt right. She spent almost every weekend and some nights during the week as well. On another nice weekend we spent it at the house, her first overnight there. I was a bit hyper, remembering the attempted intrusion, but the night was calm and I eventually could sleep. It was fun, a world away.

"I feel so safe here."

"We'll spend more time here in the spring and summer."

Two days later, Marilyn Sears called. "We cracked it. It turns out that Katrin's pharmaceutical cover story was false. The company was instead a front for industrial espionage. The travel provided cover for it. She likely met with disaffected employees of other companies or others involved in industrial espionage. We just dug in more deeply after what happened to Katrin. That's when we found out what they were doing. One of their employees/spies gave us the details. Somebody else, persons or country unknown, wanted to know what Katrin knew, so she ended dead as a result."

I thanked her profusely for solving this.

Marilyn went on, "Katrin was an industrial agent before you met her. She lived a life with you that was false. I'm glad to resolve this but I'm sad for you to have been in love with a shadow. I'm available 24/7, much to my husband's dismay. I work very sensitive cases so it makes for strained conversations."

"You've been there for Laura and me, thank you," I said.

I turned to Laura, who had listened in on the conversation and said, "I think we should go out and celebrate!" The look of relief on Laura's face was priceless. We celebrated at our favorite Italian place. We ate, we drank, we toasted each other and shared our mutual relief. I parked the car in our shared garage and we went in, stripped off our clothes and teased, licked, sucked and fucked each other. At the end we hugged and I held her as she fell asleep. Our life had become very comfortable. The next morning I awoke to a certainty I had not felt before. I kissed her shoulder and she stirred and then turned to face me. I smiled and said,

"I love you."

Laura looked at me with wonder. "I love you, too. I've loved you for a while but was scared to say it."

Where did Laura and I go from here? We worked together, we did almost everything together, she spent many of her nights with me. I remembered something my mother had given me years ago. I dug it out of a small cardboard box that contained memories. It was a plain square black box. In it was a treasure from my mothers courtship. She had given it to me when I had left home, telling me she hoped it would bring me joy as it had her. I opened the box and looked at its aluminum simplicity. It was part of the pop top of an early soda can. They came off when you opened the can. They used to litter beaches and sidewalks by the millions before being replaced by the current design with no parts that came off the can. Shorn of the actual can lid, it looked like a ring. My father had given it to her when he proposed. They had been out camping when he suddenly felt it was the right time. He opened a can, took the two components apart, fell to one knee and proposed with the soda can lid in his hand. She had smiled at me, telling me the story. "It never came off my finger until we found the right ring: then it was retired to this box. Now it's yours."

I screwed up my courage, hoping she would understand and approve. That night, I slipped off the couch to one knee, opened the box and asked, "will you marry me?" She looked at me in wonder. "Please accept this as a token of my love until we can find the perfect ring for your finger."

"Yes."

I then told her the story of my parents and this token of love. She laughed and said she loved it. She turned it around on her finger, saying she wouldn't take it off until we went ring shopping.

We found the perfect ring which she proudly wears. Life finally is calm and we enjoy life. It's nicer weather and we plan to live four days at the house and three in the office. Now we can plan our wedding and embrace life as a couple. We had dealt with a lot but we had persevered. I'm so glad to be with her. Laura and I will be one.