Chase Me (Paris Nights Book 2)(65)

“Oh, yeah.”

“Won’t get on a plane but is considering swimming four kilometers in open ocean? At the age of eighty-six?”

“You met her, right?”

“Yeah, and I think you were exaggerating about the ailing part. If she and my grandmother ever meet, they are going to hit it off so well.”

“Maybe they can get married.” Chase paused as he heard what he’d said, and a grin crossed his face. “Love to see the look on my parents’ faces if that happened. Vi!” He nudged the ring box against her hand.

Scarred but healed, that hand.

Resilient. Like them.

“Damn, I love you,” she sighed.

A huge smile split his face. He opened the ring box.

And she was a little afraid. Because he hadn’t consulted her about the ring choice—she hadn’t even known he had bought one already—and when a man chose the engagement ring on his own, it seemed as if he made a statement. Of who he thought the woman he was marrying was, and of who he wanted her to be.

One of those moments when the difference between who a man wanted to have hot sex with and who he wanted to have in his life as his partner and mother of his children really shone through.

What if the ring was fragile and sweet and fancy? What if it had a huge, protruding diamond, to show him off—what a good, generous guy he was who could take care of his little woman—rather than a ring that suited her work and how much she must use her hands?

Chase had such a hopeful look on his face, excited, pushy…exactly like his nieces and nephews on Christmas morning.

Nieces and nephews who had given Chase quite a few handmade presents he didn’t quite know what to do with, but which he had exclaimed over enthusiastically anyway, as if they were the greatest treasures he had ever received. He had a bracelet made out of pink yarn and bits of crayon-colored paper stashed carefully in a small treasure box right now, a bracelet he’d worn every day of the rest of the visit and right onto the plane back to France so his niece could see it on his wrist.

She looked down at the ring.

A gorgeous Damascus steel, with the classic ripple pattern, and a tension set diamond held in the wide band like a star caught in strength. Exquisitely simple, the diamond winking in that smooth band.

Her breath caught, and she looked up at him quickly, her eyes stinging.

“I wanted it to be something that showed off your hand,” he said cautiously, checking her face, just like his niece had his about that yarn bracelet, to make sure she liked it. “Rather than the other way around.”

Her scarred, tough hand. The stinging grew worse.

“I know you’ll still have to take it off a lot when you’re working, because of hygiene and all that, but I wanted it to be at least possible to work in it. Like it…honored what you do, wasn’t the opposite of it.”

It was very embarrassing, but she was starting to cry.

“A lot of the rings I saw looked like they were really designed for women who liked to imagine themselves as somebody’s arm candy, as if the ring was what gave them value, you know? And I wanted the ring to honor the value you already had.”

A little tear rolled down her cheek. And she couldn’t even remember to fight it. “Chase,” she whispered. She stroked the ring.

“When I was in BUD/S, at the start of Hell Week, one of the instructors said they were going to break us open. That we were just pretty clay pots our parents had made, but they would smash us and find out what was inside. And some of us would have nothing inside, and some of us would just have shit. But some of us would have Damascus steel. Like you do, Vi.”

And like him. She put her hand on that beautiful pure steel of him, that he cushioned with human muscle and with humor and warmth.

“Will you get me one?” he asked, quiet and deep, almost shy. “Because I saw one. A similar style with a broader band and a smaller diamond, as if it was this unbreakable strength that had caught something absolutely brilliant and glowing and precious. I…really liked it.” He dipped his head a little. Definitely shy.

She caught his hand, curling her fingertips into his, linking them tight.

Blue eyes met hers, so bright. So full of life and wanting and hope. And full of this certainty, with that strange brush of shyness to it, as if they had reached a point so vulnerable and so trusting that even Chase could not barrel his way brashly through it.

He had to just wait, all open.

Trusting for her to open just as much.

“I never thought I would say this about that enfoiré Abed, but he brought me so much luck,” Vi whispered, squeezing his fingers. Brought me you. All the way from Texas.

“You make your own luck, Vi. Luck’s just the world’s response to all the energy you put into it.”

“Then you, too.” She squeezed his hand hard. “You make luck, too.”

“Trust me, I know.” He looked down at their hands, his expression vulnerable and steady and wondering, and then took the ring out of the box. “I know exactly how lucky I am.” He slid the ring onto her finger. “And I’m willing to do everything I can to keep that luck.”

And they did.

***

THE END

BUT IT’S REALLY THE BEGINNING

***





Author’s Note


This started as an ode to Hollywood kind of story—a vision of leather and knives and banter and how much fun it would be to write a knife-wielding heroine like Vi. The counterterrorism plot was essentially a device for what was intended as a lighthearted caper. And then, about three fourths of the way through the writing of it, the November 2015 attacks occurred in Paris. This was a very dark time and, because of the similarities between what the hero in the “lighthearted” plot was working to prevent and the real world devastation, it made it very difficult to return to this book for some time. I think, no matter what, there are elements of darkness in it now that weren’t part of my original intention. But I hope that, just like in Paris itself, the life and energy win out. And I like to think Vi makes a good heroine for Paris…no one can keep her down.