Here's the next chapter in the "Birthday" series, that I didn't know I started when I started it. It's part 7, "The Long Weekend Continues". Thanks all to your supportive reading & posts!


Wow! Can’t tell you how gratified I was to see posts actually asking for more! Hope the quality is staying up there for all you readers.

So here’s part 7 of the Birthday Series, “A Long Weekend Continues”.

A/N: A big bow to the Harmy Board with the B&B name; I’m sooo glad I found it. I have no idea if such a tourist area exists 2 hours from DC but I’ll plead artistic license. Again, no beta readers so all mistakes are mine. I realize these are short pieces, but they seem to want to be that way, so who am I to argue?

All the usual disclaimers apply: Bellasario Productions and Paramount owns these characters. No money is being made from this, it’s just for fun.




The Long Weekend Continues

Manly Arms Bed & Breakfast
Harm and Mac’s Room
1400 Local

Why is it that just when we’ve finally made that irrevocable pledge of undying love to one another, and are gazing with wonder and contentment into each other’s eyes, my stomach has to growl? Not just growl, more like roar.

Well, that’s OK. I don’t get embarrassed by my hunger. At least not with Harm.. maybe if I’m giving closing arguments and see the members’ look around like they’re wondering if tanks are coming up the drive. But not with Harm. He’s heard that growl for years and knows to feed it or stand back. Hey, what’s this? My face is hot and my eyes are now studying the carpet. Yes, I want our relationship to change but this is not a change I want.

“Hey Mac,” Harm’s laughing. “What do you say we go out and find some lunch?”

Oh I know this is the man I’m gonna love forever. With one understanding suggestion he just let me know he thinks the old ‘us’ and the new ‘us’ are most compatible. What a guy!

“Brilliant suggestion, Harm. What was your first clue I’m hungry? Starving in fact. You know you can’t expect a Marine to put in such an,” searching for a word here, bold but not too wanton. I got it, “’energetic’ morning and not feed her.”
“Colonel, you can rest assured I will make it my highest priority to keep your strength up at all times, so you can be as ‘energetic’ as you want as often as you want.” What started out flippant ends up so seductive I nearly decide to postpone lunch for a bit to work up an even better appetite. But there goes my stomach again.

“And as far as how I cleverly deduced you are hungry, you must remember that I’m a crack JAG investigator and as such ruled out the possibility that the previous occupants of this room had inadvertently left behind their pet lion.”

Miming a pout and a slight huff, I walk over to grab my coat, happening to glance out the window onto the boardwalk teeming with tourists.

“Harm,” I say with trepidation, “there are a lot of people outside.”

“Yes Mac, that’s often the intended result of building shore side boardwalks and lining them with restaurants, boutiques, antique shops, bed and breakfasts. It sparks a thing commonly known as ‘tourism’. Tourists come, spend money, all the shops etc. employ people, everyone pays taxes and has a good time. And that’s known as a consumer economy, which just happens to be a mainstay of the system called capitalism that we have here in the good ‘ole US of A.” He’s rattling off this what-he-no-doubt-thinks is a witty soliloquy as he’s rummaging through his bag for something.

“But Harm, we’re only two hours from DC, it’s a Sunday afternoon and the weather’s gorgeous!” I sound a little panicky even to myself.

Harm looks at me quizzically. “Hence all the people out there, Mac. Putting on my ace investigator’s hat again, I’ll bet that’s why you made reservations here. It’s close, it’s got lots of fun things to do and the weather forecast was great.”

His ace investigator’s hat? He has a hat with him? Maybe if he has big sunglasses, a trench coat and slouches a whole lot we can get away with this.

“Yeah Harm, and I’ll just bet a whole lot of those people are from DC.” I look at him meaningfully. Where’s that investigative mind now?

“Without a doubt, Mac. Is that a problem all of a sudden?” Poor boy, I think our last 24 hours’ exertions has drained that vaunted brain a bit.

“We might run into someone we know,” I explain as if to a hormone-overwhelmed, sex addled teenager, of which he is doing an Oscar-caliber imitation.

“So?”, clearly not getting it.

“Us here, together.” Come on, come on, you finally figured out the theory of relativity thing, surely you can catch on to the implications.
“Hey, no big deal, Mac. People know we do stuff together. They don’t have to know we’ve been doing stuff together since Friday night.” He makes a valiant attempt to throw me off the scent by waggling his eyebrows (how can eyebrows be sexy?) and giving me that sly riverboat gambler cum Fred Astaire mixed with dangerous animals smile. He’s very good. It almost works. Almost.

“That might work with some people we might run into. But not anyone from JAG who’s gonna find out tomorrow that I’m on two days leave and you’re home deathly ill.” Not a trump card I wanted to play, but there it is and I can see he knows it.

“Oh, yeah,” light dawns on a now-unhappy Harm. He sits down on the bed, looking dejected.

“So do you really have an investigator’s hat in there?” I gesture toward his bag.

He looks at me like I’m nuts. “Mac, that was a figure of speech!”

“Well, maybe I could run out and buy you a hat, you have some sunglasses? What kind of a coat did you bring? Does it have a big collar you could turn up?”

His mouth drops open and what was unhappy Harm is now hysterical Harm. He’s laughing so hard he rolls back on the bed, his knees coming up to his chest. He’s laughing so hard I’m seeing tears start to roll down his cheeks. He’s laughing so hard he’s starting to gulp air.

“Harm!” I admonish him (when did I turn into a schoolmarm?). “This is serious!”

He’s laying on his side gasping a little. “You want to try to disguise me?” The incredulity in his voice is at maximum volume.

“Well,” I bristle a little, “it’s one approach.”

“You think if I put on a cheap B-movie PI costume and walk around with you and we see someone we know they’re not gonna know it’s me!?!” I can tell he’s fighting it, ‘cause he doesn’t want to get me mad (mad and hungry, baaad combination and he knows it), but he can’t help himself. He starts guffawing all over again.

He struggles to get himself under control. “And are you gonna find a blond wig or just wear a scarf and big sunglasses?” He’s somehow moved toward the edge of the bed were I’m standing with my fists on my hips a microsecond away from stamping my foot.

Damn, there’s that cobra strike again. How’d I end up on the bed, in his arms?

“And just how, prey tell my lovely problem-solver, are you planning on disguising that traffic-stopping figure and face of yours?” Traffic-stopping? Oh, I like that he thinks that. “Not to mention my 6’4” body?”
I won’t surrender without at least a token fight. “Well, I don’t have anything baggy to wear but you could slouch.”

The series of looks that play over his face in a matter of 3 seconds (and I would know how long it took!) fulls my heart. He’s laughing at me, he’s worried that I’m worried, he’s touched that I’m worried, he’s resolved he doesn’t care who sees us together because he’s ready to tell the world.

“Mac,” he whispers as his lips touch mine with the barest butterfly wings of a kiss. And I know he knows that I know what he was just thinking. Each loving step of his thoughts.

“OK, Harm. But if we run into the Admiral, you better have a great sick as a dog act ready and the name of a doctor in the vicinity.”

“I promise Mac, if we run into the Admiral I will look and act so sick the CDC will evacuate the area. Now, let’s go get lunch.”

I love this man. And actually, I think it’s pretty neat that he stands out in a crowd, as long as the crowd isn’t full of blond bimbos. Maybe I should get him a Marine guard. Oh hey, that’s what I am! I giggle.

“Something else, Mac?” he asks.

“No Harm, I just think I’m getting lightheaded from hunger.”

He’s standing by the bed now and pulls another one of those cobra moves (hey, I’ll tell him how I tell time if he tells me how he keeps doing that) and there I am in his arms, full body contact with my feet about six inches off the floor.

”I’ll carry you if you want Mac.” He’s half serious. “It’s my job to make sure you’re safe and satisfied, in all ways.”

Good god, sexy flyboy meets the caped crusader. Focused exclusively on me.

I can live with that. Especially when he wants to throw in bubble baths. Oh, are we gonna have a great next 50 years.



fini for now, I think it’s gonna go on a little longer.