She snuggled down close to him again and felt his arms come around her.
"Oh, yes," she said, and purred. "I may never leave this couch. Just stay here forever." Murdock caught his breath and tried to say something, but he couldn't. His mouth wouldn't work and his throat felt funny and all at once he wanted to be quiet and simply hold her.
It was ten minutes before the silent mutual admiration broke and Ardith eased back from him.
"Well, now that I've spilled my guts all over your couch and made an utter ass of myself, and puked up all of my worries and agonies and dreams and private-place emotions, I think it's time that you say something."
He reached over and kissed her lips gently, then harder, until he had pushed her down on the couch and lay on top of her. The kiss lasted and lasted.
She eased away from him and smiled. "I guess that's exactly what I hoped that you were going to say. I hope you can get the next three days off. I want to drive up to Moro Bay, above Santa Barbara a ways, and watch the ocean and eat clam strips, and walk along the water, and go in every one of the tourist-trap shell shops on the bay drive."
"Yes, we'll do it," he said, his voice husky. "I've got months of leave time coming. We'll head out first thing in the morning. Now, you want your ribs before or afterwards?"
She grinned. "Afterwards."
The ribs were amazingly good too.
Moro Bay was a delight. Murdock couldn't remember being there before.
"There used to be lots of sea otters in the bay," she said, looking out a restaurant window as they munched their way through heaping baskets of clam strips. "There were so many they decided they were hurting the fishing, so they trapped them and moved them all down the coast. Turned out almost all of them died that they moved. Now it's a rarity to see a sea otter up here."
That afternoon they found an art colony up the road toward the Hearst Castle. A little town called Cambria. She bought an oil painting of the sea and two tall trees framing a foaming wave.
The third day they slept in at the motel and the phone rang. Nobody was supposed to know where they were. "Don't answer it," she said.
"I better." He picked it up. "Yes." He listened a minute and grinned. "How the hell did you find us, Stroh?"
He listened again. "So you've got a bug on my car? Yeah, probably. You want to talk to Ardith? Sure." He handed her the phone.
"Don?"
She listened. "Dad asked you to find me? I don't believe it. Why?" She listened again, then laughed. "Yes, I can understand that. Tell him I'll be back tomorrow night. Yes, Don, and how did you find us?" She listened again, laughed, and said goodbye.
"How did he find us?" Murdock asked.
"He just said he was CIA. Dad has lost some files and he says I'm the only one who knows where they are. It's a bill he's been working on for months. I have to fly back in the morning."
"Ah-hah! Duty calls, only it's your duty."
"Yeah, some even-up time maybe. We still have tonight."
Murdock grinned. "Oh, yes, tonight's the night."
All the way on the drive home the next morning, he kept wondering who he could get to fill out the platoon. Then what would the next hot spot be? Where would they go? Maybe the Near East was heating up. Old Saddam Hussein might get frisky again, or somebody in Iran, or Libya. Oil would blow up the world again one of these days. When it did, he wanted to have Third Platoon of SEAL Team Seven ready to answer the call.
Yeah, they would be ready. They were SEALs!