Third Time's A Charm

Chapter: Four

~~~~~~~~~~

She was teasing him. Palamon had come to that conclusion when she'd brandished the candlestick at him. She was trying to whet his appetite for their wedding night. Fine. She could spend a few hours in the gallery while he tried to get the master bedroom ready.

All that mattered was getting to tonight. He smiled, daydreaming about the rolling about that was going to transpire on his bed that night. She looked like a woman who knew what to do with a man. Of course, he'd prefer if she didn't actually know what to do, but that was such an unpredictable matter these days. Women liked to think they were independent and he'd let her have that illusion once they were hitched.

Palamon chuckled. He couldn't wait. He loved how she'd dressed for him. How had she known that his favorite color was blue? That dress was perfect, displaying her figure wonderfully.

He gave his staff their orders and sat down to eat lunch and dream of.... What was her name again?

~~~~~~~~~~

On the walls of the gallery was an impressive collection of out-of-focus erotic pictures, all nicely framed and lit. How did she surmise that they were all supposed to be erotic? Because most were clear enough in places to reveal...details. Dormé wondered if the old boy thought that seeing these pictures might put her in a more agreeable mood. She sighed, staring at one picture with a critical gaze.

The lighting had been poor wherever it was taken, as though shot in a regular room without any consideration for proper lighting. If she squinted, the picture actually wasn't too bad. She had to admit that the subject was worth looking at, with sleekly muscular limbs that were resting in such a way as to convey a mischievous air.

She raised a brow. If she looked at this picture long enough, she might be a tad more agreeable, just not to the old lech in the dining room.

Her regard at last lifted to the man's face. It was turned away and in shadow, the features not quite as hazy as in the other photos. However, something about his face -- the line of the jaw perhaps -- tumbled about her memory. It was familiar. Strangely so. She leaned forward, closer to the picture. Dormé tilted her head a fraction, staring it, searching memory for anyone she knew whose jaw had that curve and whose features could match what she could make out.

Suddenly, recognition clicked. "Oh," she gasped. No, it couldn't be. She was imagining it.

But the longer she stared, the more certain she became.

This was a picture of Anakin Skywalker. A stark naked Anakin Skywalker.

Dormé flushed. She felt heat fill her cheeks and glanced away a few seconds before looking back. Giving a glance left and right, assuring herself she was still alone in the room, she let herself study the image once more.

Oh my, she thought. Very nice. Very nice indeed.

~~~~~~~~~~

Glem was waiting for Val in the crew area, holding a bottle of brandy. Val knew it was the last bottle. He lamented the fact that Dormé had declined his invitation. He'd much rather be savoring her and this brandy than spending time with his great-uncle.

"Too good to waste on him," he said, taking the bottle.

"What about those nudie pics the guy on Solas IV paid us with? You could give them instead."

Val quickly nixed the idea. Tempting, but he didn't want to spend any more credits than necessary on the old man. "Nah. I'd have to have them framed. Too much of an expense." He sighed. "There's no word from Dormé by any chance, is there?" If there was, it'd be easier to blow off this social meeting. He could say that something came up.

Val smirked. Apt choice of words. He'd said it before and he'd say it again: Dormé was a good lookin' gal and he wouldn't have minded getting busy with her. Of course, she hadn't been interested, so he'd looked elsewhere. Still, he'd liked to enjoy looking at her when he had a free moment to contemplate the genteel beauty of her features.

That Naboo sure had good lookin' women aplenty on it. When it came time to retire, he thought he might head there and get him one o' them beauties. Every woman he'd met from there was pretty.

"Not a word, boss."

Too bad. Now he'd have to endure Palamon Perrin for at least the entire afternoon.

~~~~~~~~~~

After spending far too long in the heat and humidity, Obi-Wan was glad to come to the end of his search. He was beat. Hopefully, this would take no time at all and they'd reach his home in time to take a short nap. Once more, he vowed to never drink again.

He parked the speeder behind a huge boulder that for some odd reason was sitting in the middle of the desert all by its lonesome, and went to the house he'd glimpsed. Luckily, Dormé passed by a window and he didn't have to search for her, so he set his skills towards getting to her.

He scaled the outer wall, then the building itself, wondering why he couldn't seem to catch his breath and had to stop and rest, dangling in mid-air. This wasn't as easy as he remembered it being either. Am I this out of shape, he thought. It's only been four years since I was running about doing this sort of thing regularly. Obi-Wan hoisted himself onto the window sill and carefully stood before jumping through the window and into the room.

"Hello there," he said, looking about. He'd expected to find guards and other obstacles. Instead, he found Dormé alone, her attention on one of the pictures that adorned the walls of the room.

"I'm here to rescue you," he announced, somewhat piqued that after all his trouble, there was no resistance to the attempt. It had been too long since he'd been in a good rousing fight and he was afraid he might be getting rusty. Obi-Wan had been looking forward to using his skills at least a little. To not have the chance was disappointing.

Dormé motioned to him, not turning from the picture she was looking at. "Look at this picture, Obi-Wan."

He strode to her, sucking in breaths and glad his headache had finally abated. At first glance, he saw nothing to interest him. He much preferred art that displayed the naked female form. She was waiting for a reaction however, so he gave it another look, wondering what he was supposed to be seeing. The person in it was male, probably exercised every day by the muscular look of the arms and legs....

Obi-Wan stared, a frown turning his brow. He tilted his head a little to the left. Was that...? No, it couldn't be. He leaned in a bit closer to try and make the face clearer. Surely not....

Anakin?

What the blazes? Why would a slave trader on Tatooine have a picture of a very naked Anakin hanging on his walls? And how?

I've been in the desert too long, he thought, shaking his head. I'm beginning to see things.

Now Dormé shook a finger at the picture. "I look at this picture and I swear I see Anakin Skywalker's face."

I should hope it's only his face, Obi-Wan thought, hand raising to cover his mouth. He didn't think Anakin had carried on with Dormé though, considering he'd been carrying on with Padmé. Anakin had been somewhat of a flirt with the ladies, but he wouldn't have played two women at once.

"And that one," she pointed to the one beside it, "is my lady Padmé. Tell me I'm suffering heat stroke and it's only a delusion."

While heat stroke was a possibility on Tatooine, he didn't think it was a delusion. Obi-Wan turned to the next picture, gaze going first to the body. Now this was more like it. He much preferred this picture to the other. Nice. Very, very nice. Finally, he remembered he was supposed to be looking at the face and reluctantly raised his eyes to it. The features were veiled by hair and he decided Dormé honestly wasn't in the throes of illness. It could be Padmé and probably was. When had those two done this?

He winced, pinching the bridge of his nose with two fingers. His headache had just returned in full force.

Oh Anakin, what did you do?

This had the mark of one of his youthful, irresponsible plans. Obi-Wan could easily imagine Anakin sweet-talking his lover into taking pictures, assuring her they'd be erased and forgetting to do so after becoming distracted by the activities taking these pictures had undoubtedly brought about. "It's not a delusion," he informed her.

"You see it too? Oh thank goodness! I've been standing here staring at that picture all afternoon." She pointed to the man's picture.

"Really?" He glanced at the picture and back to her. His lips twitched. Staring, huh?

Dormé caught his expression and blushed. "I was looking at the face," she said a little too firmly.

"Mmm-hmm," he nodded. "And I only read the articles."

She gave a nervous giggle. "Yes, well.... You mentioned rescue?"

With a last look at the picture of the woman, he nodded, motioning a hand towards the window. "Yes. Over the walls and through the desert. The speeder is outside a ways."

"How far a ways," she asked, crossing her arms. There was a look on her face that reminded him strangely of Padmé right then. He could practically see wheels turning as she thought up some plan.

"Walking distance. There was a huge boulder--"

"Good. Help me with these." In two steps, she was at the first of the pictures, carefully taking it down and slipping it from the frame.

"Help you?" Going to the window, he peered out. Still no one in the courtyard or any sign that he'd been discovered.

"Yes, of course. Help me. We can't leave these here, Obi-Wan."

"What, pray tell, are we to do with them?"

"Take them with us."

Obi-Wan tapped impatient fingers on the windowsill. "You want to steal the man's erotic picture collection?" That would make the situation better, yes? Just what he needed to add to his résumé: dirty picture thief. Oh, Qui-Gon was going to love this. "Have you thought this through, Dormé?"

"It would be disrespectful to the dead to leave them here."

"But...." He felt urgency rising, whether it was due to real danger or not was another matter. He just knew they needed to hurry. "Dormé."

"Think about Anakin."

Anakin would probably have taken the pictures of the woman and left the pictures of the man, reasoning that it served the lech right to have only pictures of naked men left. His mischievous side would have loved playing that trick.

"Think about Padmé." Her voice had the same passion her former employer had used when pleading a cause. Practiced, yet sincere. Obi-Wan felt himself beginning to cave in. Dormé had several pictures down now, held in the crook of her arm.

"Who is going to know who is in any of those pictures?"

"We knew."

"Not for sure and I can assure you that men don't look at the faces. Listen to me, Dormé. Leave them here. No one will ever guess that those two people were a Jedi and a Senator."

She finished gathering the pictures and turned to him. He could see from her expression that he'd lost the argument. This path was set. He was going to steal the out of focus erotic pictures. "I will know. They can't stay here, Obi-Wan. It's not right. I won't let the memory of either of them be tainted this way. They took these out of love for each other. Do you really think they'd want them displayed for anyone to look at them?"

He took them from her, held them while she cleared off the table in the corner. The cloth that covered it made a nice carrier and soon they were ready. She did a very good job of rappelling down the wall, then climbing and rappelling down the other one. Not wanting to appear as out of shape as he'd apparently gotten in four years, Obi-Wan forced himself to breathe evenly, while inside he was gasping.

Dormé seemed determined to sprint the entire way. By the time he spotted the boulder he was ready to collapse. Thank heavens, he thought. I can sit down.

But it soon became apparent that he'd thought that too quickly. Rounding the boulder, they found...sand. Nothing else. Just sand. He leaned against the boulder, squinting at the ground. "I left it here. I know I did." Setting the pictures down, he crouched, peering at the sand a bit harder. Then he spotted them. Tracks. Little, small, cursed, inconvenient....

"Bantha spit!" Obi-Wan straightened. He'd known the Jawas would steal anything left alone too long in the desert, but he hadn't even been half an hour!

"Bantha spit," Dormé asked. "That's a new one on me."

"Wonderful. Just absolutely wonderful. My supplies are gone and I'm out a speeder."

"You did bring the speeder, right?" She bent and retrieved the pictures.

Obi-Wan directed an indignant stare her direction. "I'm not an idiot. I wasn't that hung over. I didn't hitch a ride and forget I'd done so. No, the speeder was right here. Those tracks are from Jawas. Now I'll have to pay them for my rightful property." He swallowed hard, took a deep breath and tried to interject some cheer into his voice. "Well, on to plan 'B' then, I suppose."

"What's plan 'B'?"

"As soon as I figure it out, I'll let you know. In the mean time, I suggest we get walking."

"We could always go back to Palamon's and borrow a speeder." Dormé grinned. Her hair was wild about her face and she had a pretty rosy tint upon her cheeks.

He returned the smile, letting his ill-humor leech away. Was it possible that she was even more beautiful than he'd remembered? "You mean like we 'borrowed' his art collection?"

She laughed. Obi-Wan liked the sound.

~~~~~~~~~~

She was out of shape. Dormé pushed herself, determined that she wasn't going to gasp for breath. Obi-Wan was obviously still in top shape, having no trouble with their escape or the running across the desert. It was embarrassing yet sweet how he slowed down just so she wouldn't feel she was lagging behind.

Her face was probably bright red. The curse of a fair complexion. Heat and exercise always did that. Dormé bet she looked absolutely hideous. Holding the pictures, she followed Obi-Wan as they set out walking. It was too bad his speeder had been stolen. Funny, that. She'd have expected the spaceport a more likely place for that to happen, but what did she know about this planet? Could be that the desert was more hazardous.

They walked in silence for several minutes and Dormé decided she should thank him for coming after her. He could have decided she wasn't worth the effort and gone on his merry way. That's not Obi-Wan though, she told herself. "Thank you," she said softly as they continued their trudging across the hot sand. Her feet were going to be very tender from the constant heat of that sand, but she could live with it.

"For what," Obi-Wan replied, shedding his cloak and tossing it over his arm. Sweat trickled from his temple, down his cheek and dripped on to his tunic. Dormé was glad she wasn't the only one sweating like swine out here.

"For rescuing me."

"Oh." He shrugged. "I couldn't let you be kidnapped. It would completely ruin our plans for today."

"Definitely." Silence fell again for several more breaths, during which Dormé noticed he did not look at her once. Obi-Wan's attention remained firmly fixed on the sandy ground. A sense of awkwardness settled upon her. She didn't know what to say.

Finally, he raised his head a little. "You had feelings for me."

"Yes." Still very much do, she added silently, wondering where he intended to take this particular conversation.

"Then why in the blazes did you not tell me? Don't you think it's the sort of thing a man might want to know from the woman he dreamed about at night?" Irritation rode his voice.

She paused her strides, watching him continue walking, her mouth opening and closing twice before she could form the words she was thinking in response. "You're kidding me, right? Should I have blurted it out, Obi-Wan? There at tea? Or perhaps in the museum with those dreadful children watching? Or maybe in the zoo--"

"Yes! I should have known!" He whirled, then shook his head, shoulders slumping. "No. No, I don't suppose blurting it out would have been best."

She took two steps closer to him. "Besides, you could have mentioned you had feelings for me."

"I kissed you," he said, as though a kiss was some grand, clear declaration of love and affection that she should not have been able to miss.

"Twice, and neither was too...involved, if you catch my meaning." She looked him up and down, a warmth curling lovingly in her belly at his admission of having dreamed about her. "You dreamed about me?" It pleased her.

"Of course I catch your meaning, Dormé. I do have some experience in the matter of kissing a beautiful woman and yes, I do dream about you." He licked his lips and when he continued, his voice was slower and softer. "Did. I meant to say 'did'."

There was a quicksilver pass of pain in his gaze and an immeasurable air of sadness. Dormé bit her lip and looked at the ground, uncertain of what to say once more. When she looked back up, he was walking away and she hurried to catch up.

~~~~~~~~~~

Of all the things Val had expected, finding his great-uncle in the throes of a full-out melodramatic tantrum was not one of them. That, however was what he saw the minute he walked into the hall.

"It's gone, Val, it's all gone!" Palamon grabbed the bottle of brandy out of Val's hands and opened it, taking a swig.

Val cringed. That was not the way to treat a good brandy. "What's gone," he managed weakly, struggling with the urge to grab the bottle back and make a run for it.

"My collection. My wonderful picture collection!"

"You mean the pictures Saluc found in the trash?" Saluc was Uncle Peregrine's oldest grandson, known for being so cheap that he'd get gifts for the family from trash heaps. Saluc had found a camera on Coruscant in one of the really fancy sections and managed to salvage some nude pictures from it -- the sum of Palamon's collection.

"They've been stolen. I should have known that tart was up to no good. She toyed with my emotions, strung me along with her feminine wiles, and broke my heart!" He took another swig of brandy. "I wanted to marry her, Val, but she played me with false protestations until her accomplice showed up and they cleaned me out!" Palamon wailed. "Oh my sweet pretty..uh...Dor...Dor...Dormé," he finally came up with the name, blurting it out with a sob. "She of the deep cleavage and long legs! How could you, my love?"

Val blinked. Dormé? Did Palamon just say Dormé? How many women named Dormé could there be in this area right now? "Um, Unc., where did you meet this woman?"

"She was in a bar and we just connected, my boy. You know what I'm talkin' about." He chortled and waggled his brows, temporarily forgetting to cry and wail.

"Right. What did this...Dormé look like?"

"You should have seen her, Val. Dark hair, dark eyes, tits out to here," he illustrated with his hands to such massive proportions that Val knew he was exaggerating. No woman could have a rack like that without toppling over forward from the weight of them. "Legs that went all the way from her ass to the ground."

It was an asinine description, but Val knew what his great uncle meant. He'd had occasion to admire Dormé's assets a few times over the months she'd been a part of his crew. "Tell you what, Unc., I'll see what I can do."

An hour later, Val made his way back towards his ship.

What was Dormé doing, or thinking she was doing? And how had she found an accomplice so fast?

Scratch that. He had plenty of ideas on the latter. As to the former, was she going to ransom the collection?

Man, he thought sorrowfully as he considered such a scheme in his mind, why didn't I think of that? I could have milked the old boy out of a fortune and all because of poorly shot erotic art. Peace and quiet. Uh-huh.

He should have known that wily minx had a con brewing in that pretty head of hers. The pupil had learned well and he was proud of her for pulling it off. Why, to click with the old man so quickly, she must have had her accomplice lined up and watching Palamon for weeks to know his weakness! That Dormé. What a gal. She was good.

Val was barely up the ramp before he was shouting out, "Hey guys, guess what Dormé did? You're all gonna love this!"