freshoffthefarm | [Chesapeake Bay]

Webb saw Annie's red Volkswagen pull up along side his current model year Aston Martin thanks to the surveillance system in the house. When he bought the car, the other directors couldn't resist the James Bond cracks. Webb managed to shrug them off well enough.

He walked down the front stairs and the driveway to meet Annie by her car. Manderly was a large property, even for Webb, and didn't want her to be too intimidated by it.

"I hope the drive wasn't too bad..."

She'd kind of spun in a circle and, as she came back toward facing the house, she was also facing him. A smile came over her face and she nodded as she took off her sunglasses.

"The drive down was nice. Traffic got kind of interesting around Richmond, but-" She dismissed it with a shake of her head and went back to staring. "But this. You weren't kidding, were you, Mr. Webb? This place is amazing. And your car... I bet they call you James Bond at the office, don't they?"

"I can even build firearms from items in my briefcase," he sounded amused, "Though I usually leave my exploding pen and shoe phone in my office."

He smiled again and led her into the house. Large windows looked out onto the bay and two doors led out to it's basically private beach. The living room had a fireplace in the center and opened to his spacious kitchen.

Annie followed, her eyes still taking in everything he was showing her. They lingered on the beach and she smiled. That was definitely a place she was going to spend some time this weekend and she had the sudden thought that he might not see her at all.

"The house is gorgeous. Did you grow up here?"

"No, but I did spend my summers here. This house belonged to my great-grandparents, and my grand parents. It's really part of a trust now, but I still like to come out here from time to time."

Despite the giant house, it was relatively secluded. Virgina's Eastern Shore didn't have many, if any, tourist attractions and remained peaceful. Webb knew his neighbors and they knew him. Less of a chance for someone to show up and try to kill him. Though that did happen once, about five years ago.

"It seems like it's really quiet out here. Nice and peaceful. Your summers must have been a lot of fun." She shifted her bag to her other shoulder and looked around the kitchen. "I should have offered to bring dinner. I stopped seeing restaurants a while back."

Two people with guns were better than one, but she still would have been upset to know that someone would have dared to interrupt the tranquility. Oh, and she'd have been upset to know that they tried to kill him, too.

"They usually were, I loved coming here when I was a kid, except when it was Jellyfish Season. I got stung one too many times. What can I say? I never listened to my grandfather."

"He led the way toward the stairs to the second floor, "You can put your things in one of the guestrooms. My bedroom's at the end of the hall," The last statement was more of a point of information than anything else. So she could judge how far away she wanted to be.

"As for dinner," he turned back toward the kitchen, "I stocked the kitchen so we can figure that out when you're settled in."

She pressed her lips together to avoid smiling outright. Oh, jellyfish.

"Great. I'll just put this down and be right back." Of course, once his back was turned and she was on her own, she looked in one of the rooms before curiosity got the better of her and she peeked into his bedroom. Classy, tasteful and decorated beautifully. She wasn't at all surprised.

Smiling to herself, she went to the next open door, which was right next door, and put her bag down on the bed. She figured she'd just live out of the bag, but she did want to change.

In jeans and a tank top, not sure if barefoot was appropriate, she headed back downstairs and into the kitchen.

Webb was out of his usual Three-Piece suit uniform and chose to wear khaki pants and a looser fitting vertically striped button down shirt and boat shoes.

He turned away from the stove when he heard her come back down the stairs, and looked her over quickly, electing not to comment on her feet. It didn't bother him much, if at all.

"I have pretty much anything you could want...or we could just get pizza."

She saw the quick look and followed his gaze to her toes and wondered if she'd taken a misstep, no pun intended. Food, though, was a distraction and she shrugged as she tucked her hands in her pockets and moved closer.

"I'm good for anything. If you don't want to go out, I'm a pretty decent cook." She hadn't killed her nieces yet when on babysitting duty, anyway. Mac and cheese and hot dogs? On second thought... "Or pizza."

"Anything is fine with me. My kitchen is your kitchen if you'd really like to cook. Take-Out menus are on the counter."

Regardless of the dinner choice, he was opening a bottle of wine. If it didn't go with dinner, it really didn't matter or at least it didn't matter right now.

Annie nodded and then went to the fridge to examine the contents. He hadn't been lying - he really had thought of everything. Rather than make dinner this late on a Friday, though, she decided instead to make breakfast in the morning.

"Take-out it is," she said in a matter-of-fact voice that wasn't meant to be loud enough for him to hear. Pizza menus, Chinese- "Ooh, Chinese."

Five minutes later, she'd ordered and paid over the phone and was satisfied that she'd ordered something that he'd like. Maybe it went with the wine and maybe it didn't. Frankly, she didn't care, she was going to enjoy the glass he'd poured and she gave him a grateful smile. "So," she said with a deep breath. "Are you a big beach guy?"

"I'm more of a sit on my back deck and watch the water, kind of guy. Occasionally, I go down to the water. You?"

Webb also went from white to lobster in about five seconds. He still can't figure out how he survived Paraguay, Australia, Afghanistan, Terra Del Fuego or any other number of sunny spots he'd found himself in over the years.

"I like to go down to the sand, lay in the sun for a while, maybe go in the water."

She'd spent enough time in Giza, Sri Lanka, the Philippines and other tropical locations that the sun didn't really bother her. She tanned up nicely and she liked the serenity of the beach. "I like watching it from a hammock with a beer."

He didn't seem like a hammock and beer kind of guy.

"Swap hammock with comfortable chair and it sounds like we'd have a pretty perfect weekend."

"I've been waiting for the perfect weekend for a while," Annie said with a smile and another drink from her glass. And then she was teasing him. "And I promise not to interrupt your comfortable chair time."

"As long as you don't suddenly turn into a ringing cell phone with the CIA's area code, you aren't going to bother me."

Manderly was really much too big for one person. The last time he was here, he didn't even bother to take the canvas covering off of most of the furniture. Maybe, if he finally retired, he'd turn the place into a bed and breakfast.

He wondered if he should let on that he looked through her personnel file, and more so if she looked through his.

"Fair enough."

Annie's curiosity might extend to peeking in a room or two when she was sure no one was looking but she hadn't quite worked up the courage to go looking into anyone's personnel files, especially anyone with 'Deputy Director' attached to their name. Her own should have been pretty clear, excepting certain incidents like Sri Lanka and Ben Mercer, but the fact that she does pretty well otherwise? Makes her a fairly good agent.

Finding out he'd checked up on her wouldn't be a shock so much as it had the potential to be embarrassing.

"They told me to keep mine on, just in case."

"Of course they did, you're the new girl," the sarcasm in his voice was clear, "If they forget how to use the coffee pot, you'll get a call."

He'd thought about making up some kind of order for her, just so she'd have an uninterrupted weekend but that would arouse some suspicion on Joan's part. She'd either think he'd want to sleep with the new girl, or worse poach her agent to work in counterintelligence. Webb did not want to deal with the wrath of Joan Campbell, he was another one who didn't go into that office unless he had to.

"Took a look at your file, I like you Ms. Walker. Your ops are blown in style, just like mine."

She wasn't sure he was wrong about the coffee and the comment made her smile... right up until he talked about looking at her file and she froze, glass midway to her lips.

It sounded like a compliment, even if it was a little backhanded, and she tilted her head and gave him an amused look. There had to be a half dozen good stories behind that statement and she made a quick mental promise to herself that she'd hear one or two before the weekend was over.

"Call me Annie." Quick sip, then she put the glass down all together. "You know you'll have to elaborate on that, right? Can't leave me hanging."

He nodded, "Clay or Clayton, whichever you're more comfortable with."

Webb thought a minute before picking a story, there were quite a few to choose from, excluding Paraguay of course. She shouldn't hear about that, not with only six weeks in.

"I lost the Romanian Princess once, no thanks to the military officers I had working with me."

"You lost her? Please tell me you found her again." In a sick and sadistic way, listening to a superior's horror stories was going to make her feel better about her mishaps.

"I did. She was hiding with a Naval Lieutenant Commander, one I tapped to be part of the whole mission. He just thought he was cute when I went looking for her and wound up at his door. He came through in the end, and we managed to rescue the whole thing."

Webb still does not think it was cute and it happened 15 years prior, "A few years later his boss broke my nose...in Moscow."

His lack of amusement in the situation is clear and all Annie does is shake her head, ducking it to look at the kitchen counter. She pushed her hair back when she looked at him again and then she leaned forward just a little as if she were inspecting his nose.

"You can't tell." She motions to her own while talking about his. "Why'd he break it?"

"I had a good plastic surgeon, not on the CIA's health plan. As far as why he did it? He assumed I deserved it, which I guess I did considering I almost got his officers killed.....multiple times on multiple missions."

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject