The plane finally settled to a stop, and Allie grasped her son’s hand to keep him from running. After thirty sets of boots marched down the steps, she finally recognized a familiar gait, a familiar stride - so familiar. Before she could let go of Owen’s hand, the boots had skipped into a jog, and Owen yanked hard enough to tug Allie off balance. Laughing, she released her son who sprinted, dodging between soldier’s legs, into the arms of his father.

Thank you, Lord, she prayed silently. You work in mysterious ways. Thanks to a stupid kid, Allison Strickland got to have her reunion.

+++++++++++

For the fourth time in ten minutes, Mitch lunged off the bed and crawled across the little space to the other wall to retrieve the wadded-up paper ball he had made from his arraignment papers. He had gotten pretty good at skimming the ceiling with the sphere and dropping it directly into his open palm. If the holding cell in Providence P.D. was any indication of his future, he was going to hate his life for the next two months.

“Visitor, Parker,” called a deep voice.

“It’s Parkington,” Mitch mumbled as he scrambled back to his bed. With an uncertain future, he had already decided to keep any complaints internal until he made it to the minimum-security facility. His lawyer would get him transferred to Devens or Allentown, and he would just learn to function with restrictions.

“Mitch?” came the unexpectedly feminine voice, and Mitch shot to an upright position on his little bed.

As Piper Hayes walked into view, his eyes burned, and he held his breath to keep himself together. He intended to stay callous in prison, and the sight of her threatened those stoic intentions. “What are you doing here?” he complained, expecting her to despise him now.

“I came to see you,” she shrugged. “I came to give you this book.” She waved around a small paperback.

“You shouldn’t be here.”

“Okay, but I am.”

Mitch wanted to yell at her. He hadn’t given her two cents of importance when he had been in his wealthy world, and he had actually treated her like trash even before he made plans to hurt her. The thought of her pity made him sick and ashamed. Still, she didn’t look satisfied to see him there or condescending, and he found himself wanting to hear what she would say. Who knew when he would see another kind face? Which made him remember what he had almost done to her.

“You shouldn’t be here because you don’t know who I am, what I’ve done.”

“You’re kind of right,” she agreed. “I don’t know anything about your family or your upbringing; I don’t know your preferences or social habits. But you’re wrong that I don’t know what you’ve done. I know you set me up in New Haven.”

Mitch’s eyes popped open, and he felt his breath speed. Maybe he had misjudged her intention.

“I also know that you are partly responsible for what almost happened to the Prados, what happened to the people in South America, and I know you dealt drugs which got you drug contacts so you could make it all happen.”

“Piper-”

“Don’t interrupt, Mitch. You’re going to make the wrong assumptions, and you’ll miss out on what I came to say.”

Mitch shut his mouth; he would hear her out. From the bruise on her cheek, he could see that he owed her that much.

“I also know why you came to New Haven that night, how you tried to stop the hit on the Prados, and how you spilled everything to the FBI as soon as you had the chance.”

“Oh, god. Please don’t make it sound like some noble enterprise.”

“Ha! No,” Piper agreed. “Nothing you did after the fact will bring those people back from the dead, and it won’t repair the terror the wonderful Prados felt for their seven days of hell, and it won’t repair my broken ribs or the bruise on my face or the fact that I will never get out of a car alone in a neighborhood I don’t know well. You can’t undo what you did.”

“So you’re here to gloat,” Mitch leered, finally hearing what he expected.

“Not at all,” she pursed her lips, sadness painting her eyes in unexpected compassion. “I’m here because I think there’s a chance that you can learn from your mistakes. Because your actions after the fact showed enough wisdom and humility and selflessness that I hold out some hope for you. That after your two months in the relative discomfort of a minimum-security prison – not nearly enough punishment, by the way – that you might continue to make the decisions that will redeem your earlier sins.”

Crossing his arms against his stomach, Mitch stared silently at the floor for a full minute before he could stop the hard breaths trying to send him into a breakdown.

“I can’t say anything to that,” he finally admitted. “I can’t make you any promises, because in this, it’s not really about you.”

He heard her laugh, a sweet sound that punched him in the gut. “That is why I have hope for you. You know that you have to take responsibility. Your bravery after the fact shows that.”

Finally, her words broke through his shell, and a sob burst out of him.

“Please don’t do that, Mitch,” Piper reached out and wrapped her hand around a bar. “Keep up the bravery so you can make it through and get out. And here,” she held the book through the bar. “It’s a book about a politician who made some bad decisions and ended up in prison, and how his life changed inside. A brilliant guy.”

“Part of me is really insulted.” Mitch raised one corner of his mouth. “But the larger part of me is really grateful.”

Piper grew somber. “You can go back to your wealthy family, and they will cover your sins and bury this. But you could also become something much better.” Turning to go, she called back over her shoulder. “Take care of yourself.”

As she walked away, Mitch stared at the spot where she had stood. He didn’t deserve anything from her, but he would read her book.

+++++++++++

“Charlie!” Ex-state-senator Rick Connors beamed into the phone at his beautiful daughter. He noted the pink color in her cheeks and the fine fuzz that had begun to grow on her head.

“Hi, Daddy,” she smiled shyly.

“How long until you get to go home?” he queried.

“Mommy says two days. As long as my counts stay high, I won’t have to come back until next month, and if my weight goes up, I can come in for just a day visit.”

Rick sucked in his tears, the ones that swelled from the guilt of his own stupidity. Not only had he cost four people their lives and terrorized several others, he had nearly cost his own daughter her health – and what would eventually have been her life.

“I bet you’re going to be outside playing on the backyard swing by next week.” He forced a smile. “Tell your mom that you need to have ice cream at least once before you go back for your next treatment.”

“Sugar is bad for me, Dad,” she corrected, and Rick managed a full laugh

“You are getting very smart. You just taught me something.”

Charlie smiled at her dad. “Mom says it’s time to go. I love you!”

“I love you, too, sweetheart. Talk to you in a few days!”

Rick handed the phone back to his lawyer, laying his head on the table and calming himself with a few deep breaths. “What I almost did,” he moaned as he lifted his eyes to his lawyer.

“I talked to Pamela,” the lawyer comforted his client. “Charlie is responding to the treatment better than almost any of the other participants, though all are doing well. The researchers, the Prados, lobbied for Charlie to get into the first round of trials.”

“I don’t understand all this, Grant. What kind of people help someone like me?”

“I don’t think they were helping you, Rick. I mean, they can’t blame Charlie because of what you did.”

Rick shook his head. “A lot of people could. I was only partially joking when I told you I would keep my opponent’s son out of Brown.”

“You never asserted to me that you were a good man.”

“I never really believed I wasn’t, not until now.” He lowered his head to his hands and stared at the desk.

Grant patted his client on the back. “A lot of people do a lot of good soul searching in prison, Rick. Maybe you’ll figure some things out.”

“It’s looking more and more like Charlie might live long enough to see me get out of here, if I behave.”

“So behave,” Grant smiled, and Rick sighed a melancholy breath.

Even knowing he didn’t deserve anything good to happen to him, he couldn’t deny his joy every time he thought of Charlie. And he couldn’t ignore his gratitude to the people who had offered him something he could never merit – the life of his child.

+++++++++++

When the scream ripped across the early morning air, Bash tore his eyes away from where his cork danced on the rippling surface of the bay. He turned to Piper, suddenly aware that the boat danced as turbulently as his floater.

“What are you doing?” he demanded, and she pointed to something at her feet.

Somehow, miraculously and using only a fishing line, she had pulled a blue crab up past the surface of the water and into the boat, and it now reared perilously close to her bare toes - toes left vulnerable by her insistence on wearing sandals in the early chill of a Rhode Island dawn.

Grabbing the net from beside him, Bash turned it upside down and set it over the crab, flipping the net sideways with a deft twist and ensnaring the crab by its own claws. Despite his care in the maneuver, Piper lost her footing and fell into his lap with a heavy thud.

“Oof,” he complained gently as her elbow caught his chest muscle on the way down. Could’ve been worse, he smirked.

“Just don’t say anything,” Piper commanded, and Bash raised one hand in surrender. “Hold on; my phone is buzzing.”

“Why do you bring that on a fishing trip?” he scoffed.

“It’s on silent!” she sassed, sliding the phone open. “Molly! What are you doing up this early?”

To Bash’s consternation, Piper said little after the initial greeting, though she glanced meaningfully at him several times over the next few minutes.

“Well, I admit it makes me nervous. I have my questions about him. But I have to say, he’s a great kisser.” Piper laughed, a ringing tone sure to scare away every fish in a quarter-mile radius. “Just be careful with him. He’s crafty.”

Piper’s final words before she shut off the call finally tugged Bash from the distraction of her body, which snuggled entirely too close for any other thought to take dominance.

“Wait, who’s crafty? Who is Molly with?”

Biting her lip, Piper grinned at the air before her. “She’s with Luke.”

Up until that moment, Bash had thought Piper was talking about himself. “You said he’s a great kisser…”

Cackling riotously, Piper tried to leap out of Bash’s lap. Maybe she had intended to stoke just a little jealousy…

Fortunately for both of the boat’s occupants, Bash nimbly snagged Piper’s waist and prevented her impending ascent.

“You will upset the boat if you get up too quickly.”

Piper twisted her lips in a sardonic smile at the crab, as if it could understand her sassy expression that was promising rebellion. He is definitely jealous, she smirked with amusement. With a sudden lurch backward and sideways, she sent the little craft teetering toward the edge of its balance, and Bash threw his hands out to steady himself lest his bulk send the craft into a capsize. Her waist released, Piper spun to the other side of the boat, using her own weight to stabilize the rocking vessel and swerving to avoid the snapping crab that was thoroughly worked into a frenzy.

“That,” accused Bash as he slid closer to her, “was not safe.”

“It’s just a little water,” she leveled, surreptitiously dipping her hand into the frigid liquid and then tossing it directly onto Bash as he leaned toward her.

With an equally sneaky maneuver, Bash slid to one side and brought his arm behind her, tugging her toward him with irresistible force until their bodies pressed together in the middle of the boat.

She tried to hold in her breathlessness, but the exertion had worked her into a slow pant, and she stared at him with a moment of dangerous intensity. Glancing down, she broke the heated look that had settled between them, and Bash loosened his grip infinitesimally. “I guess it wasn’t safe,” she agreed.

“You kissed my cousin?” The intensity of his tone riveted her eyes to him.

Suddenly staring into Bash’s fierce gaze, her teasing didn’t seem as funny.

“It was my first time being drunk,” she offered, recognizing how weak the excuse sounded. “Luke had orders to seduce me. I was…oh, there’s no excuse except that you and I weren’t…”

Bash leaned his cheek against hers. “You weren’t mine yet,” he asserted pointedly.

“I wasn’t,” she agreed, raising her hand to caress his face. “But I am now.”

Closing his eyes, Bash ran his lips along her chin. “And I am yours,” he promised. “Though this is probably not a safe place to have this conversation, mi alma.”

“Not safe?” she wondered, her tone entirely too breathy to promise that she would provide any security – which was even less likely if continued to speak Spanish to her.

“Not if you want to continue this friendly dating scheme you are trying to manufacture.”

With a pained laugh, Piper forced herself to breathe, the blood rushing to her face with the release of the intensity. “At least I’m not holding you to the three or four years of friendship before dating,” she murmured against his chin, and he inclined his face a degree toward her, brushing his lips across hers.

“I would never make it,” he groaned against her mouth.

She hunched down away a fraction, nuzzling her head under his chin. “Neither would I,” she admitted. “Now, let go of me or I will have to find a way to give both of us a cold shower.”

Despite her demands, he dipped his head down for one quick kiss before pushing her off of him and sliding back to his side of the boat. They both sat a full minute in tense silence before Piper grabbed up the net and tossed the crab back into the water.

“You know those make a wonderful appetizer,” he informed her, his tone smooth and in control again.

“But I would feel like a murderer,” she shrugged, her voice mostly normal as well. “We can buy one from the nice man over by the pier if we really want to make crab cakes.”

“You realize that it is the exact same thing,” he chastised.

“But at least we would be helping a man make a living.” Her smile melted Bash in an instant, and he turned back to reel in his line.

“Okay, then,” he agreed. “Let’s go get coffee number sixty-three. You said one hundred coffee dates, yes?”

“Yes,” she agreed, securing the tackle box and opening it so Bash could disassemble his rig.

“And twenty-two more beach walks…” he continued. “Twelve more Del’s…”

“I have to watch my figure,” she teased. “And then only four more fishing trips.”

“You’re going to spoil all the surprises if you make everything so structured.”

“I had all the surprises I could stand in our first two weeks together.”

Bash’s beautiful smile broke across his face. “I’ll find a way,” he countered rebelliously, and Piper mirrored his beaming grin.

“If we survive the four fishing trips,” she taunted.

Leaning in to close the tackle box, he slid his hand behind her head and pulled her into a deep, heated kiss. “Now, back to the shore,” he hummed, turning to ignite the outboard motor.

“Four more trips…” she sighed as she looked away toward the pier, and Bash couldn’t suppress his smile.