Chapter 4

As part of her “rehabilitation” Bob commented on the fact that all she seemed to have was work clothes. His next suggestion changed their relationship a little more.

“Lacey?”

“Hmmm?” She was sitting in a chair in the living room, wearing her new green robe. Her knees were bent and her feet tucked into the corner of the chair.

“I don’t want you to take this the wrong way, but I think you could benefit from some new clothes.”

“Clothes?”

“Don’t get me wrong. I like the way you look in your new robes and all. And I want you to be comfortable. But all I’ve ever seen you in other than your robe are your work clothes. Don’t you have some jeans and T shirts? Something to lounge around in like you’re doing now, except also things you can go outside in?”

“I never felt the need to have that kind of clothing,” she said.

“It’s none of my business,” said Bob. “Forget I said anything.”

“I had clothes like that in college,” she said, thinking back to those days. “When I started clerking I felt like they were too casual, so I stopped wearing them.”

“Do you still have them?” asked Bob.

“Oh, no. I gave them to The Salvation Army years ago. They probably wouldn’t fit me anymore anyway.”

“You must have been as skinny as a rail back then,” said Bob.

“I have gained a lot of weight,” she said.

“Well it looks good on you.”

“Why do you say things like that?” she blurted.

“Because they’re true?” He shrugged. “I’ll stop if it bothers you. I don’t want to make you feel uncomfortable.”

“Before I met you I’d have told you to mind your own business,” she said, softly. “Now ... I don’t know. I just feel different.”

“I think you’ve mellowed a little since I met you.”

“Are you saying I was a stick in the mud when we first met?”

“I’m saying you were a lot more formal,” he said, gently.

“Aren’t I supposed to be formal? Isn’t that what a high profile prosecutor is supposed to be?”

“Maybe as a high profile prosecutor, sure. But you’re not a prosecutor every second of the day. There’s no reason you shouldn’t be able to wear jeans and go bowling, or get a hot dog, or wear fingernail polish. You’re a prosecutor, that’s true. But you’re also a woman.”

“I don’t really know how to be a woman,” she almost whispered. “The way I was brought up, I wasn’t supposed to think about that.”

“Sounds harsh,” he said.

“It was all I knew.”

“Well, you’re all grown up now. This is America. You have the right to pursue happiness. The Declaration of Independence says so, right there in black and white. I spent twenty-five years securing that right, and I didn’t even know you then.”

“Are you saying I should put myself in your hands?”

He laughed.

“No, I don’t think you’re quite ready for that, yet.”

“Why not?”

“Because when I think of you as a woman, I think of things you wouldn’t appreciate.”

“What kind of things?”

“I just told you, you wouldn’t appreciate them,” he said. “Let’s go out and get you some jeans. Come on. You need to get out and get a little exercise.”

“You know how easily I still get tired,” she said.

“If you get tired we’ll come back home.”

“What about Tom and Lenny?”

“They’ll come with us,” he said. “You’ll be well guarded. Plus nobody will know we’re going out until we get there. You can wear sunglasses and a hat. Like a movie star.”

“I don’t own any sunglasses,” she said. “Or a hat.”

“I’ll loan you mine,” he said.

Suddenly restless, the urge to accede to his demands became overpowering.

“All right. I’ll go get changed.”

While she was in her bedroom, Bob coordinated with deputies Jenkins and Thomas, who had stayed with her after protecting her in the hospital. It was determined that Thomas would stay at the residence, to ensure no one tampered with it.

Bob knew that meant ... plant a bomb.

Bob didn’t actually have a hat or sunglasses, but he borrowed a pair of sunglasses from Lenny and she put them on happily. She left her hair down which, in her mind, made her unrecognizable to the general public. Again, Lacey’s little girl came out in her. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d just gone window shopping. That was frivolous, and frivolity invited the Devil’s attention. Now, though, with two armed men escorting her, she felt like the Devil might be scared away. So, even though they were supposedly looking for jeans and tops, she went into stores with other things too, just to see what was in them. Bob talked her into buying a packet of beef jerky, something she’d never tried. As she gnawed at a piece, her face lit up.

“This is good!” she gushed. Bob grinned.

“Told you so.”

“Make sure you offer a piece to Tom,” said Bob.

She did, and Tom was happy to accept.

The two men walked behind her as she went on up the street.

“What’s this all about?” asked Deputy Jenkins.

“All she has in her closet are work clothes.”

“So?”

“I think she could benefit from loosening up a little,” said Bob.

“She could benefit ... or you could benefit?” Tom was unapologetic.

“Let me ask you this,” said Bob. “When you first met her, did you think she had a stick up her butt?”

“Not really. She was too sick to move, if you’ll remember.”

“Well, trust me. When I met her she was like that. No sense of humor. No urge to blow off steam. All she did was work, work, work.”

“There’s nothing wrong with that,” said Tom. “Maybe she’s trying to climb the prosecutorial ladder. Maybe she has dreams of being an AG at some time in the future.”

“So you feel exactly the same way about her now as you did when you first met her?”

“I didn’t say that,” said Jenkins. “I admit I like her.”

“I do too,” said Bob. “I’m not looking for anything other than a good relationship with my boss. At the same time, I know what constant stress can do to you. It would be a shame for us to spend so much time and energy protecting her only to have her keel over of a stress-induced heart attack.”

“So you don’t want to ride her like a well-trained cutting horse?” Tom smiled slightly.

“In the words of one of the few US Marshals I respect, I didn’t say that.” Bob returned his crooked smile.

“You know it’s never good to mix business with pleasure,” said Jenkins.

“I know. But she’s so provincial I can’t help feeling like bringing her into the twenty-first century would help her on a professional basis.”

“Officially, all I care about is her safety,” said Tom. “As long as you don’t jeopardize that, then it’s none of my business.”

“I’m not going to jeopardize that. She hired me to ensure her safety, too,” said Bob.

They might have overdone it a tad for her first day out and about, not quite a week since getting out of the hospital. She did buy two pair of jeans, and three T shirts. She also got a sweat shirt and two blouses to wear with either her new jeans or the black skirts she already owned. She lingered, looking around wistfully in the lingerie section of one store, but was too embarrassed to make any purchases. Just looking at the pretty, colorful bras and panties made her feel wicked, especially with the men standing off to one side, watching her.

By the time they got her home, though, she was so tired that she had no energy to change into one of her new outfits.

“I’m just going to take a bath and go to bed,” she said, weakly.

“That’s probably best,” said Bob. “You can always try going casual tomorrow.”

It was two hours later when Bob saw the medicine they’d given her when she left the hospital, sitting on the bookcase. She was supposed to take that medication every four hours and Bob was pretty sure she’d missed a dose while they were out shopping for clothes.

He went to her door and tapped. Hearing no response, he opened the door and stepped in, expecting to see her under the covers. His intent was to wake her long enough to get a dose of medicine in her and then let her go back to sleep.

But she wasn’t in bed.

He looked around. She couldn’t have gotten out of the room without him seeing her, and there wasn’t really anyplace in the house she could go where she wouldn’t be seen, sooner or later.

He looked at her bathroom door, which was firmly closed. Maybe she woke up and went to the bathroom?

He looked at the bed. It hadn’t been slept in.

Worry bloomed in his gut and he went to the bathroom door. He tapped gently.

“Lacey? Are you in there?”

Nothing.

Fear caused him to open the door without knocking again. She was still in the tub, leaning back, her eyes closed. The water was up to her throat. Through the faint remains of soap on the surface of the water he could see her breasts. They weren’t moving very much. Somehow water had gotten splashed out onto the floor. The bathmat was soaked.

Thinking she had fallen asleep in the tub, he was in a quandary about what to do. He knew if he woke her up she would be mortified that she was naked, and that he could see her. But there was nothing for it. He couldn’t leave her in the water. Cold water could induce hypothermia.

Suddenly electrified at that thought, he crossed to the tub and stuck his hand in the water. It was room temperature, which meant it was somewhere near seventy degrees. That could suck heat out of her body in killing amounts if that body was submerged long enough.

He shook her. Her eyes opened, but only halfway.

“Lacey? You have to get out of the water, Lacey. It’s making you too cold. You have to get out now.”

“I can’t,” she whispered. “I tried. Too weak.”

He imagined her lowering her body into hot water and soaking in it. He’d done that before, and knew how weak that could make a person as their muscles relaxed completely. Then, as that water slowly cooled and started to suck the heat out of her body, the effects of mild hypothermia disabled her in different ways. She was probably going to be okay. The water had only been this cool for half an hour, if she was lucky. But she was going to need help getting out and dry and into bed.

“I’m going to have to help you,” he told her. “I’m sorry, but I’ll have to touch you. I can do it by myself if you try to help me a little bit.”

“Cold,” she whispered.

Reaching to push the lever that opened the drain, he started to remove her from the water. Then he realized he wasn’t ready yet. He didn’t have towels laid out. Her bed wasn’t turned down. When he got her out of the water he’d need to get her dry and warm as soon as possible. Leaving her there, he stood and looked around. There were two towels on the towel bar beside the commode. He snatched them and returned to her bedroom, where he gripped the covers and pulled them down. Leaving the towels there, he returned for her.

He knew she would suffer horrible embarrassment from what was about to happen, but there was nothing else he could do. She’d probably be so embarrassed by his view of her nudity that she’d fire him. But that was okay, as long as she recovered from yet another blow to her health. Even with all that on his mind, he wasn’t really prepared for what he saw when he went back into the bathroom. The water had drained to her hips, and her whole body was visible.

He’d observed her most frequently with her breasts bound in the ace bandages that had replaced the cloth strips her mother had taught her how to use. Her mother had insisted that large breasts attracted wicked and unwanted attention from males, and that they had to be controlled. Her method of doing that was to encase them in a bra and then wrap them tightly with long strips of cloth. The end could either be safety-pinned, or simply tucked into a previous wrap. In college, Lacey had discovered Ace bandage wraps, and had invested in a number of them. By then the practice was habit, and even though she couldn’t afford to buy new bras at that point, since men didn’t pant after her in sinful lust, she assumed the ace bandages were all she needed. Even now she didn’t own a single bra, though Bob didn’t know that.

He knew she muted the size of her breasts in some fashion, but had assumed she wore a tight sports bra, or something like that. As he looked at her globes now, naked before his eyes, he couldn’t imagine a sports bra that could possibly tame them into the condition they appeared to be in when she wore her work clothes. It was as if she had small breasts that had somehow soaked up the water in the tub, inflating as that happened.

The tips were covered with fairly large areolas that were brown in color, with darker nipples that were erect. He was sure that was because of the coolness of the air, but they looked delectable to him. He scolded himself for thinking what he was thinking and reached in to slide one arm under her knees, and the other behind her back. The angle was awkward, and she was heavier than he expected. He felt the strain of complaining muscles, but then she moved and it got easier as he was able to stand up.

She shivered violently in his arms and he could hear her teeth chattering where her cheek lay against his pectoral.

“It’s going to be okay,” he said. “We’re going to get you warm and then you can sleep and all this will just seem like a dream. Just pretend I’m a robot who is seeing to your immediate needs.”

“S-s-so c-c-cold,” she stuttered, through teeth that sounded like a starving woodpecker.

“I know, but we’ll get you dry and in bed and then you’ll warm up.”

He dropped her, more or less, on top of the lower part of her bed, where the water that soaked into the covers would only be near her feet, later. Grabbing a towel he started rubbing it roughly over her flesh. She drew into a fetal position, either from shame at being naked in front of a man, or to try to conserve heat. Because of that, he got her legs and back dry first. She was shivering almost constantly now, and moaning in distress. Her breathing was shallow.