Trust Me (Paris Nights #3)(70)

Lina clasped her hands soulfully. “They’re joined at the heart. It’s a love that transcends the sexual, rising to another plane.”

“Fuck that,” Jake said, horrified.

Lina laughed and laughed.

Jake grinned. He really never got tired of making her laugh. “I do like the way they’re flying in the same direction, fighting the same enemy.”

Lina lifted a fist. “Watch out, Hercules.”

Jake smiled at her, and for a little bit they just watched the waves together.

“Nice save with my parents about your long-term plans, by the way,” she said. “I mean, you dumped it all on me, but nice save for yourself.”

“Hey, they’re your parents.”

Lina smiled ruefully and shook her head over her parents. But then her eyebrows slowly knit. “I don’t understand what you meant by it, though. You weren’t serious, right? When you said it was all up to me?”

Jake paused. That hadn’t been a perfect response? “Why wouldn’t I be serious?”

She held up her little finger. “You’re too big to fit around this.”

Oh, yeah. “I’m surprised you didn’t slap me, when I said that.”

“For your belief that a man had to make himself smaller to be with me? You’re lucky I prefer nonviolent solutions.”

Jake folded his arms and studied the sea. Once, not so long ago, boat loads of men had crossed this dark Atlantic and died on beaches not far from here. Lina was going with him to visit Omaha and a cemetery tomorrow. They’d been fighting for what was right. And they’d left a lot of women and kids and parents weeping.

“Maybe a man might have to make himself bigger,” he said. “Big enough to choose her over him.” White crests danced and broke along the dark sea. “If he wants something longer than a few months. If he wants something he can count on.”

She straightened away from the base to turn to him, the dragon soaring by her shoulder. “And you think you can’t count on me?”

He shook his head slowly, and her eyes flared in shock. “You can’t count on me,” he tried to explain. “I can’t control when I’m called into action or where. I can’t control the level of risk I take. I can’t keep you safe. So how can I expect to count on you?”

Lina folded her arms, eyebrows knit in thought, gazing at the paving stones.

“Unless I get out. It’s another year before I can make that choice, but if you can last that long...”

Lina lifted her head suddenly. “How is it your job to keep me safe?”

Jake’s mouth opened and shut. Oh, come on, he thought. It’s been my job since the species was evolved. That’s why I got the big shoulders and the strength.

But if he followed that trail of thought down its logical length to something about her job being to make babies, she would get over that reluctance about violence really damn fast, he was pretty sure. But it is why she got the wider hips and…shut up, shut up, shut up.

“Jake.” Lina spread her hand. “You have to choose what’s best for you.”

People said that all the time. Choose what’s best for you. And it was a load of bullshit. No one on the teams would last ten seconds with an attitude like that. All the other guys would kick his ass off it, as fast as they could. “I don’t agree. I have to choose what’s best for us. If I want there to be an us. And I do.”

“You have to choose?”

He shoved his hand over his head. “We have to choose.”

Lina fell silent for a moment. Her expression changed. Softened. She snuck a glance up at him, suddenly so shy she looked ten years younger. “You want there to be an us?”

“Yes,” he said, and she took a step toward him. “And I’m willing to give up my career for it.”

There. A man couldn’t make a bigger declaration than that, could he?

Lina stopped still. Her arms folded. Her eyes narrowed. “The career you worked so hard for?”

“Yes.”

“The field in which you are the best of the best?”

Well…a man should never brag. But… “Yes.”

“Where the Navy offers a million dollar reward for your recovery if you get shot down, because that’s a minimum of how much you’re worth to them?”

Had she been reading up on special ops? “Maybe.”

“That you love, where you have all your team, those guys you are so inseparable from?”

“Yes.” Well, he did love the guys. He’d loved catching Al-Mofti, that f*cking *. But the older he got, the more he thought too much to be someone else’s weapon. People didn’t always aim him at the right targets. Mark and his damn book club. “I am thirty, Lina.”

Lina flung out her hands. “Why would you do that for me?”

He stared at her helplessly. Because I am crazy about you? “Lina…”

“Jake. Don’t get me wrong. I don’t want you on the other side of the world, getting shot at. But I can handle whatever I need to handle. Don’t you believe that about me?”

He started to speak and met her eyes. Slowed. Thought. “Of course I believe that,” he said quietly. He’d seen it.

“You can’t freeze your life for me.” She laid her hand on her icy dragon. “You have to keep doing what you believe in. What makes you feel alive. I would never give up my career for you.”