Trust Me (Paris Nights #3)(55)

Loyalty, perseverance. All those fine things.

“Do I want to be in your future? Did you just ask me to marry you?” he asked, stunned.

Lina blinked and drew back. “What? No, I—we barely know each other!”

Oh. Okay. Probably just as well, right? He had been sucked down into a spinning, deep vortex of want at his very first sight of her, and he still felt as if he would never stop falling. Maybe it was a good thing that she could keep her feet on the ground?

“Are all of you guys nuts or something?” Lina shoved her hat back. “I thought Chase was an exception.”

Jake could feel himself flushing. Again, damn it. At least in the twilight she wouldn’t be able to tell. He pulled her onto the sand, although it took a real force of will for him to step on disturbed sand, no matter how firmly he told himself there would be no mines there.

He set her down on a lounger, and then couldn’t fit on it himself without pulling her into his lap, so he knelt beside it, facing her.

Jesus, now he probably looked as if he was proposing.

And she’d made it clear that she wouldn’t say yes.

“Date,” Lina said. “You said you wanted to date. I—I want to do that, too.” She hesitated, searching his face as if he’d scared the crap out of her with that mention of marriage, and then reached out across that barrier of fear and spread her fingers over his shoulders. “Know you,” she said quietly. “I want to know you. I like everything about you so far.”

The heat grew in his cheeks, but he knew she couldn’t see it in the light from the lamps and glowing bridges, so he just knelt there, staring at her. “Yeah?” he finally managed. His voice sounded husky, even to himself.

He covered her hands with his. They were so much smaller than his, cocooned between his palms and his chest. But they were maybe, in some ways, more brave. I like everything about you, too.

“It’s okay if you meant something temporary,” Lina said. “It doesn’t have to be a long future.”

He blinked, set sharply back. And wondering why she would reach out to him and slap him away at the same time. Maybe her fear still struggled to get out, too? “Why not?”

“I don’t know.” She looked uncomfortable and wistful. “Do you even have a long future?”

That was a blow right to the gut. He stared at her, unable to believe she had said that.

Her eyes widened. “Here,” she said, wincing in distress. “I meant a long future here. Before you have to leave again.”

Oh. Oh, of course she hadn’t meant…she had a generous heart. She never would have said what he had first heard. He adjusted her hat, tugging it down a little on her head, and tucked a curl back. “Five more months. Unless something big spins up somewhere and they pull us for it.”

And Europe was a cushy deployment. For those five months, he was fairly unlikely to die. Of course, Chase had thought that, too.

So had Lina.

“Five months.” Her face lit with relief. Five months pretty obviously seemed like an eternity to her. Was that a comment on how long she expected to want to date him, or just a reflection of her own inability to really think long term right now, despite her decision to believe in the future?

It kind of felt like an eternity to him, too. All his thinking was in terms of six-month deployments. Since he was nineteen years old, the only thing that had ever lasted more than six months were the tight bonds formed with the other men on his team.

And he lived in the constant risk that he would not have a “long future.” He’d pressed his trident into far too many coffins, and the thought of claiming a future with someone so damn beautiful made his neck crawl, like calling down a jinx on them both.

He wanted it. Shit, yeah, he did. But that didn’t mean he could have it.

Or rather, he couldn’t have both. He couldn’t both be there for his kids at every milestone, protect them and his wife, have a home and also have a career as an elite special warfare operator called to fast-rope into compounds in every hot spot on the globe.

But he wanted her so damn bad. Jesus, he’d known she would make a mess of his insides. It was a wonder he’d even got up the guts to start flirting with her that day.

Guts.

Tulips. That grew and bloomed in some of the harshest conditions on earth.

He stroked the hair at her temple, his hand lingering so that his thumb could trace her cheekbone and touch just the corner of her smile.

“Sometimes,” he said slowly, “planning for the future is kind of like insurance. Because you might live, too, and it’s better to have a back-up plan if you do.”

Her eyes flared in shock.

He closed his eyes tight. “I’m sorry.” Why the hell had he just said that? To a civilian, for f*ck’s sake.

“And I would be the back-up plan?” Lina spoke carefully, but he could still hear the distress and wariness in her voice.

“No.” He dropped his hand from her cheek to close it around her thigh. That wasn’t what he wanted this fantasy of her with him to be. He wanted it to be central. Real. A real thing they both could keep. “That’s not what I meant.”

Lina gazed at him soberly a long moment. He sure knew how to put a damper on a pretty girl’s happy, flirtatious mood, didn’t he?

Her hands came back to his shoulders, testing him for solidity. “You don’t believe in a future either, but you want to, and you try to,” she said.