Chapter 14

14

“So, let’s lay out our battle strategy.”

“Lay it on me, Lieutenant Colonel Sexy.”

“Kris, I’m serious. We get in, we kill it quick, we stealth back out again.”

“Loud and clear. What is our prospective time frame?”

“Twenty-five minutes tops. No distractions, we accomplish our objective and get the hell out again. Any questions?”

“Yeah,” Kris looked over the top of his sunglasses at the crowded grocery store and then over at Cath checking her grocery list. “You do realize that there isn’t a hope in hell of that plan working out, right?”

Cath looked up from her phone and seeing the amount of people in the store let out a sharp curse.

Why, oh why, had she put off grocery shopping until Christmas Eve?

With a snort, she watched as Kris went to grab a cart and Cath realized she had her incredibly sexy answer right in front of her. She had been bad at shopping for herself before he came to stay; she had barely kept a skeleton pantry for when she needed it and ate on base or skipped meals if she didn’t feel like cooking. Breakfast aside, Kris’s idea of getting groceries was ordering from a multitude of take-out places so there were different types of leftovers in the fridge, or just going out to eat every day. They were at the grocery store because they had no choice: they needed food and supplies for the house, and since they planned a movie night in as a date, they wanted snacks as well. It was a big enough shopping trip that it necessitated a journey to the nearest full-sized grocery store off base, just outside of San Diego, because the small depot available at Pendleton was thoroughly tapped out from people shopping for Christmas dinners. In her shopping ignorance Cath had forgotten how stupid busy the grocery store was on Christmas Eve.

“Should have brought tear gas,” Kris murmured in her ear.

“Don’t give me ideas,” she murmured back with a grimace. “Well, standing here doing nothing isn’t going to get the job done any quicker. I texted you half the list, stick to it, let’s divide and conquer. Into the breach we go, try not to lose any limbs.”

“Try not to break any off of anyone and we’ll call it even.” He kissed her on the cheek and pulled out the list on his phone to skim it. “Meet you by the front registers once we’re ready to check out?”

“Sounds like a plan.” She grabbed another cart and headed for the produce section. Her first stop was to grab the veggies she needed for dinner, a Thai chicken stir fry she loved to make and rarely had the time or energy to complete after work. While the selection of the most common vegetables was slim, most of the produce she needed was plentiful on the shelves; mainly, she guessed, because no one needed Thai chilies and oyster mushrooms for a traditional Christmas dinner.

Their own dinner tomorrow was about as non-traditional as they could get. Since it was just the two of them, Kris convinced her to let him make reservations at an expensive restaurant in West Hollywood. It hadn’t been a hard idea to sell to her considering it meant less work and more time for them to spend together. The game plan was a lazy day at home, followed by dinner and drinks, then back to the condo to open their gifts to each other. She was, admittedly, feeling a bit giddy about celebrating with Kris. It had been years since she really celebrated Christmas as anything but a casual get-together with friends. As much as she adored Danny, the idea of a Christmas where she didn’t spend the following three days scrubbing motor oil out from under her fingernails and feeling the remnants of a hangover burning the back of her throat was highly appealing. More than that, the idea of spending Christmas Day with someone she loved, someone who made her feel happy and content the way Kris did, was enough to make her feel euphoric. Her mood had been good all day, and she suspected that even an overcrowded grocery store full of overtired shoppers wouldn’t change that.

Steering around the other carts like a pro-NASCAR driver, she managed to grab everything she needed, up to and including other fruits and vegetables to tide them over until the holidays were done. She was passing the bakery section, debating the idea of getting a cheesecake for dessert that evening, when something on a bakery display caught her eye. She steered the cart over and picked up a red and green decorated box, flipping it over to read the back as a lightbulb went on in her brain. Breaking her own rule, she grabbed two of the boxes, set them in the basket. Her phone jingled, pulling her attention away, and she pulled it out her pocket to see a text from Kris with a single sentence and a jar of artichokes:

Green light?... I hear these are good.

Looking up, and through the crowds, she caught sight of him watching her with a playful grin from the edge of an aisle. With a roll of her eyes, and knowing how much she loathed artichokes, she shot back:

Red Light…. Absolutely disgusting. Not a chance of me putting that in my mouth.

She watched as he checked his phone with a smile and then casually typed back:

Noted, anything else I should be aware of on that list?

Cath chuckled and made a face at him, scrunching her nose as he grinned flirtatiously at her. She gave him a smirk and texted back:

Wouldn’t you like to know? … or maybe you’d rather like to know what I would instead?

He gazed at his phone and then, giving her a wink, he turned and disappeared into the crowded aisle again.

With a chuckle she drifted in his direction and wasn’t surprised to find he had moved on fast, before she could get there. She checked her list, grabbed pasta off the shelf and tossed it in the cart then began searching for the brand of pasta sauce she normally kept in house. She had drifted down the aisle, engrossed in what she was doing and trying to get past a pair of people parked talking and blocking the space when her phone went off again.

With a sigh of amused vexation, she opened her phone to find another picture, time one of a jar of wildflower honey along with the same caption:

Green light? … It’s almost as sweet as you are.

Cath shook her head, wondering what his overall game was. He obviously wasn’t doing the portion of shopping he needed to do, not exactly. After a moment she decided to play along and took a photo of an expensive bottle of truffle oil, an item she chose at random that she would never buy, and shot back playfully:

Red light…Thinks it’s God’s gift to everyone… kind of like you.

He sent back an emoji of a smiley face with its tongue stuck out and then sent her back a picture of a coil of smoked sausage, the innuendo very clear. Cath retaliated by going classic and sending back a picture of the eggplant she had in the cart. He responded by sending her a selfie of himself giving her a sexy glance over the top of his sunglasses.

Grumbling at his antics, she pulled up her list and began to work through it, deleting the items she had grabbed and making sure she was headed in the right direction of the next item she needed to grab. She was in the next aisle retrieving the protein powder she used for her daily workout shakes when she felt her pocket vibrate. With an admittedly curious snort, she thumbed the screen to see a picture of a bottle of chili oil:

Green light?

Since it was an item, she regularly used at home and could use for that evening’s meal she quickly texted back:

Green light… you know I like it nice and spicy.

The photo he sent back was a unicorn in terms of what she would allow and not allow. It was from prior to the accident, the two of them curled together in his bed at the condo, covers pulled around them as she rested her head on his chest and he kissed her hair. To Cath, the snapshot was a rare and impulsive moment of insanity, something she would never ever allow normally, but she had been content in his arms and in a good mood post-coital. She’d agreed to the photo on the stipulation that it was something for their eyes only, on the pain of losing both his nuts and any sexual privileges he valued. She queried a half smile, she had no regrets in allowing it – truth be told she actually liked the picture -- but she sure as hell wasn’t going to tell him that readily.

At this rate, between Kris distracting her and the crowds, it would be Christmas Day before they made it out of the damn store. She tossed her phone in the basket, suspecting it wouldn’t long before it went off again, and willed herself to focus and not get completely caught up in his game, as entertaining as it was. She hurried along tossing the items she needed in the cart and wasn’t surprised when a few moments later the phone vibrated again. She picked it up with an exasperated noise to find a picture of a can of gourmet hot chocolate on the screen:

Green light?

Cath had few weaknesses in her life, but top shelf chocolate in just about any form was one of them. Even if her kitchen cupboards were mostly bare, she kept good quality hot chocolate on hand and she had been known to keep a stash in her office as well:

Green light. As if that’s a real question, Kris. Get two.

His response back was almost instant and cryptic enough that she stopped her cart and cocked her head as she read the screen:

Already in the basket Babe. I figured as much, given that you have chocolate in…interesting places around the house. Among other things…

Cath made a face and narrowed her eyes, leaning on the cart and typing back:

What’s that supposed to mean?

He took his time responding, causing her ire to rise slightly. When he did, she felt her eyes go wide in surprise:

I know you keep three things in your nightstand: A Glock 22, a very large bar of dark chocolate and a vibrator. I’m not sure what war you’re prepping for, but it sounds like a hell of a lot of fun, I’m in anytime you need me.

He closed with a devil face emoji and Cath felt her face go red. She looked around as if she expected other shoppers to be able to see what he had sent. She was about to fire back a response when her phone jingled twice:

And before you climb up a shelf in the cereal aisle and take me out with a sniper rifle, no, I wasn’t snooping. You told me to pick a drawer in the bedroom to stash my stuff in, apparently, I opened the wrong one….

… Or on second thought maybe the right one…

She pinched the bridge of her nose with her fingertips, her words coming back to haunt her. Normally she’d have gone ballistic over an invasion of her privacy as large as this, but she was used to living alone so there wasn’t a lock on her bedside table, there was no reason for one. The Glock was unloaded, and as an extra precaution, she also removed the firing pin. As much as she wanted to chew him out, she had a feeling it was a genuine accident, one that he frustratingly just so happened to be able to use to his best advantage.

Now thoroughly distracted and having acquired most of the items on her portion of the list anyhow, she gave up and decided to go and find Kris instead; if for nothing more than to strangle him out of pure spite for deciding to play dirty games with her on one of the busiest shopping days of the year. She turned the cart around and headed for the end of the aisle where it was clear of people and put some fire in her step. The store was rapidly going from unpleasant to the third level of Christmas hell and all she wanted to do was go home, have a glass of eggnog and relax.

She guided the buggy out of the aisle and pulled to an abrupt stop with a scowl, crossing her arms over her chest. Kris was waiting for her, leaning casually on his cart and signing autographs for a group of teenagers who were standing around him looking starstruck.

“Here you go kiddo.” He handed a kid back the scrap of people he had signed with a smile, blue eyes lighting up like a beacon at the recognition. After weeks of being on the sidelines, she knew he felt like he was finally stepping back into his element. It wouldn’t be long, and he’d be ready to be back on set, kicking ass and taking names.

The kid muttered a happy thank you and scurried off into the crowd while Cath continued to give him a measured and stern look. Kris gave her a slightly guilty expression, looking like a kid with his hand caught in the cookie jar, and then grinned as he popped a grape in his mouth from the bag in his basket.

“Fancy meeting you here.”

“I really can’t take you anywhere, can I?” She made a show of looking exasperated as she pulled her cart up next to his. She scanned his basket casually, noting with frank surprise that everything on his portion of the list was neatly there. There was no way he had managed to grab that much when he had been playing on his phone the whole time, not when he had never been to that store before and had no clue of where things were located.

“Did you pay those kids in autographs to do your part of the shopping for you?” She asked, giving him an incredulous look as the realization dawned on her.

“Maybe.” Kris tried to look innocent, sliding his sunglasses high onto his forehead and giving her a puppy dog look to get himself off the hook.

“Unbelievable, I leave you alone for twenty minutes and you acquire minions to do your bidding. If I wasn’t annoyed, I’d be proud. It’s kind of an ingenious idea.” She tried to look put out, between the texts and the photos, and the teasing, she had every right to be but with a smile tugging the corners of her mouth and his baby blue eyes searching her face, it was a lost cause. It was official, the man was her kryptonite, and she had no shield against how he made her feel. He got away with things that she would have dropped other people for easily.

“All my ideas are ingenious, and what good is star power if you aren’t going to use it once and awhile?” He stretched and flexed his shoulder, extending his fingers and looking at the nails. “And you said I should learn to ask for help more. I am still healing after all.”

“Oh, now you admit to that, when you’re trying to get out of trouble, of course.” He was almost completely recovered; he could go a full day without wearing his sling and the pain in his lung and ribs was down to minimal, only present if he truly over did things. Cath leaned in and ran her finger down the neck of a large bottle of spiced rum he had set in the upper portion of the basket. “If you are going to outsource, you should train your boots better; I don’t recall this being on the list.”

“No, but eggnog was, and they seem to go hand in hand, I made an executive decision.” He returned the gesture, leaning over to peer in her cart. He gestured to the red and green boxes she had put in her cart. “And those? I don’t recall gingerbread house kits on the barracks supply list you made.”

“It’s not a barrack supply list,” she protested as they started towards the cash.

Kris lightly bumped her cart with his and followed her towards the cash register. “Babe, it’s alphabetized and organized by need and quantity. You could run a field camp with it.”

“I have, actually.” She guided them into line, ignoring the curious stares they were getting from other shoppers. True to what Kris had told her, she found that it was getting easier to disregard the feeling of constantly being watched and scrutinized. They made a gorgeous couple, him tall, tanned and muscular, she blonde, lean and toned. Coupled with his A-list status, and the fact the press knew they were an item, it was almost a given now that they attracted attention. If she let herself be bothered by that fact, she’d never leave the damn house again.

Taking the opportunity when given, Kris came up beside her and slipped his arms around her waist, hugging her close. She leaned into him, enjoying the feeling of being wrapped in his arms as they waited in the queue. The line was moving at a snail’s pace, not unexpected considering the grocery orders were large and the staff was exhausted after a busy holiday season. Cath felt her eyes begin to drift over the magazine selection by the cash, by passing most of the cooking magazines and sweeping over the tabloids until something caught her eye, causing her to take a sharp breath. She reached out and grabbed one of the magazines with a snort of disbelief.