Chase Me (Paris Nights Book 2)(60)

“Who was the other guy? Are there any other attacks planned?”

“I don’t do interrogation, honey. But I’m pretty sure they’ll find that out. You did good, capturing him alive.”

“His gun jammed, didn’t it?”

Chase nodded, all the hairs on the back of his neck rising yet again. He couldn’t talk about it. His throat and lungs shrank into tiny balls when his brain even ghosted close to what would have happened if Abed’s gun hadn’t jammed.

He’d stayed behind in the office ten seconds to take a deep breath and calm down, and that might have been two seconds too long.

But even if he had followed her immediately, without that stroke of luck with the gun of the first man in, he might not have been able to make a difference. If Abed’s gun hadn’t jammed…he couldn’t draw a gun faster than bullets sprayed from an AK-47.

Vi’s face was very somber. “Damn it. You should have told me.”

“Vi. If any of us believed you were still in danger, we would have kept that restaurant shut down.”

She glared at him.

“Well, we would have, Vi. I’m sorry. I couldn’t tell you, because I was already messing up the covert part of my mission enough as it was. We wanted to shake Al-Mofti loose, not scare him into deep hiding. Vi…for as long as I stay in, there will be plenty of times when I can’t tell you what I’m doing until long after it’s done.”

“I understand that. But this was my restaurant. My people.”

He couldn’t say anything. He understood exactly why it bothered her so much.

She rested her splinted hand over his, curling the finger and thumb around the edge of his palm insofar as she could. Acceptance. He liked it so much. It just uncurled in him like a flower opening, which was the silliest image for a man in his profession, but he liked it way the hell better than all his death and dying metaphors. I can disagree with you and be mad at you and still accept and love you and be glad that you’re alive, that touch said.

See? He always felt that Vi went straight to his heart. Or maybe it was that their hearts beat in the same way.

“I know it’s stupid that you light up my life so much,” Vi said, and those words light up my life just kind of shot through him, sparkling, “because I only met you a few days ago and we fight half the time. But…I like fighting with you. It’s got zing.” She made a wiggling motion of her fingers into the air, apparently indicative of his zing.

He settled his own hand over her wrist, holding that since they couldn’t hold hands. “Everything about you has zing, Vi. You make me feel as if I’m going snap-crackle-pop all the time.”

“Except sometimes,” she said. “Sometimes you’re like old pajamas.”

Wait, what? “Uh—”

“Like I can be comfortable with you. No matter how tired, or how battered, or how wounded I feel.”

He ran his fingers from her shoulder to her wrist. Being so wounded you couldn’t even do a proper cuddle was shitty. Maybe he was getting ready for a career that didn’t involve so many bullets.

Hard to let go, though. To leave the safety of the world in other hands while he sat on his own.

“It’s a powerful combination,” she said. “That much zing, and that much peace.”

Yeah.

“Hey, Vi?” he said, low.

She angled her head.

He’d noticed that before. When his voice dropped, when he had to say something vulnerable and intimate, she listened to him better.

“Will you marry me?”

God, she had the most beautiful green eyes. They just fixed on a man as if all his worth was held in whether they would blink yes or no.

“I figured out what to do about our grandmothers. I thought maybe we could do two ceremonies, one here and one in Texas. That would work, wouldn’t it? I mean, half my family would come to both, so you never know about my grandmother, she might end up coming to both, too. But that way it’s not an ultimatum, which it’s better not to give my grandma. And—”

Vi put her burned hand over his lips.

He caught himself and slowly sighed, sighed, sighed, trying to sigh out all his need to argue, convince, push, persuade, and just wait. Let her think. Let her answer.

“When are the bluebonnets?” Vi asked. “April?”

He nodded.

“Ten months from now?”

He double-checked on his fingers. “Nine.”

“I’ll tell you what: if I haven’t killed you by January, it’s a yes.”

His heart leaped. All the blood in his body just seemed to rush to his wounds and heal them. He tightened his hold on her wrist, one of the few parts of her body where he could hold her tightly right now. “Do you mean actually kill me or just try to kill me? Because I’m pretty hard to kill.”

She started to laugh a little, and it was the way she did it, her eyes shimmering with happiness, that went straight to his heart. “I think your ability to survive me, and stick it out, and keep coming back for more is one of the things I want to make sure you can keep doing long-term. So if I only try to kill you and you survive it, it’s still a yes.”

She was laughing at him. And laughter leapt in him, too. That glorious aliveness that he’d felt from the first moment he saw her. “Damn, I wish I could hug you. Can I tell my grandma?”