Chase Me (Paris Nights Book 2)(64)
“Oh, so you know the ending, too. You’re just pretending not to.”
She pinched him. But not really enough to sting.
“Okay, what kind of story?”
“Just any story. Maybe a story you like to tell. Or maybe one you never tell, because you wanted to, but you didn’t know who to tell it to.”
“Comedy, tragedy?”
A little pet of fingers against his chest. “Anything.”
He took her hand and ran his thumb up her work-toughened fingers. “We can take turns. You tell me some, too.”
She nodded into his side.
He thought and thought. “Well…once there was this young man who saw people fall from tall, tall towers. And it hurt his heart, because he couldn’t catch them, and he watched the towers crumble to the ground. And so he tried to make himself into someone who could always do something, never just watch a television helpless again. And…I don’t think I can tell this.”
Vi squeezed his hand. “I’ll go for a little bit. You grew up on a ranch, and my grandmother and brother have farms, right? Let’s start with that.”
***
“Does this package contain what I think it does?”
“Oh, look at that! More fan mail. Now I wonder which of your fans could have sent you pink peekaboo panties?”
***
“Wow, you look happy, even for you. What’s going on?”
A big grin. “I’m cleared for action again. You would die of jealousy if you knew the training they’ve got us on for the next month. It’s in Corsica, with your 2e REP, SAS from Britain, and the KSM. They said this time the imperative really was for us to learn how to cooperate and not try to beat all the other forces, but we’ll see how that goes.”
A faint smile, green eyes watching him very alertly. “This just revs you up, doesn’t it? You love your job.”
“It’s my purpose, Vi.”
She came to stand in front of him and rested a loose fist on his chest. “Have fun. Kick ass.”
“Will you miss me?”
“Of course I’ll miss you. But I’ll be busy kicking ass, too.”
“It will get harder,” Chase warned, warily. “I’m with SOCEUR right now, but they don’t have to keep me there. The next deployment could be six months in a war zone again.”
“Is this the part where you realize you need the kind of woman who can pack up her life and follow yours around?”
“No. This is the point where I know how good it is to be with a woman who has a full, good, happy life without me. So I don’t have to feel guilty about my own life choices. But it will still be hard. For both of us.”
“Chase. Please try to wrap your mind around what it means to apprentice in a starred kitchen at fifteen and work my way up to my own two stars by twenty-eight. I. Do. Hard. Things.”
“Damn, I love you.”
“I love you, too, you arrogant idiot. Now go kick ass.”
***
“Vi! Vi! Wake up! Guess what day it is?”
“It’s…is it four in the morning? Merde, Chase, we just got to bed an hour ago.”
“It’s January! I survived!”
“You might be premature on that.”
“Too late! I made it. Pay up, Gorgeous.”
Vi rolled over slowly. In the dim pre-dawn of her brother’s farm house, where they’d gone to celebrate New Year’s Eve, Chase’s big body was propped over hers, his hand shaking her shoulder. He looked as pushy and unstoppable and eager as a kid at Christmas. Which she should know, having been dragged out of bed at this hour only a week before by his nieces and nephews when they spent Christmas in Texas.
Even though she was in that swimmy, queasy space between a night full of dancing and good wine and the hangover that was going to set in soon, she still had to smile.
Chase had fun at New Year’s. He danced all night. He carried the kids on his shoulders while he danced and let them put funny hats on him and crouched in a corner coaxing smiles out of a tearful three-year-old who, overstimulated but determined to make it until midnight, was having a harder and harder time handling it when her older cousins ran faster than she did.
He had fun at Christmas, too. He washed dishes and decorated trees and helped cut out cookies—although he mostly ate the dough—and split wood, making sure Vi came to watch him flex while he did it, and kept a fire going. Christmas morning, he got down and built train tracks and robots and even, calmly and with a secret glint of humor in his eyes, played with dolls in princess outfits when his littlest niece begged him, although he tended to have the princesses get in catastrophic situations and then explode into action with flips and derring-do as they surmounted it. His niece loved it.
From what he said, missing Christmas with his family was one of his hardest times downrange, and he was thrilled when, like this year, his tour ended in time for him to enjoy it.
“Pay up what?” she demanded, just to see what he said.
“Your entire life, of course,” he said grandly. “Now mine. As promised.” He held out a small box. “Plus, Grandma says can we quit messing around and pick a date. She’s decided she wants to complete a triathlon, and she’s worried we’ll mess up her training schedule.”
Vi had to pause at that. “Seriously?”