Chase Me (Paris Nights Book 2) (24 page)

“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?”

She laughed again, as if laughing was easy now, even with a bullet wound through her torso, and a broken hand, and burns, even with terrorists to fight. “Can I
meet
your grandma?”

He beamed. She wanted to meet his family! “Of course. You’re going to
love
her. Almost as much as you love me.”

He peeked at her hopefully.

She held up her splinted hand and brought the index and thumb so close together paper couldn’t pass through them. “You mean this much?”

He frowned at her.

She widened her thumb and forefinger a millimeter. “This much?”

“Violette Lenoir.”

She held up both hands, about ten inches apart. “This much?”

He took her wrist and stretched one arm as far out as it could go without pulling on her wound. The other was limited by the bed.

“I don’t know,” she said judiciously. “Seems a bit much for a man whose real name I don’t even know.”

“Oh, shit.” He’d forgotten about that. He clapped his hand to his face. “My name’s going to be on the marriage certificate. Isn’t that enough?”

“Or even know for sure what he does for a living.” She gave him an assessing glance, and her eyes glinted with mischief. “Rangers, maybe? Delta Force?”

Chase gave her a puzzled look. “Are those soccer teams or something?”

“Probably Delta Force,” she decided, her eyes full of mirth. “Those guys are the best, right?”

“They’re
what
?”

“Almost as good as the British SAS or the 2e REP commandos.”

Chase narrowed his eyes at her, fulminating.

But he didn’t really care, because she looked so alive and happy now that she was teasing him, and all that zing was back, but with this underlying solidity, this sense of
hey, we’re going to really try to make this work. She’s in it to win it with me, too.

And when Vi was in something to win it, he was pretty sure she didn’t lose very often.

She grinned now, so full of herself to have provoked him. “Do you even
remember
you have a small trident tattooed high up on your left shoulder? Are special ops supposed to have identifying tattoos?”

No, but he’d been nineteen and bursting with pride, and so far none of his commanding officers had insisted he have it lasered off.

“You were looking at my naked body?” He clapped his hands to cover his nipples, horrified.

And she giggled so hard. Giggled like a girl, a young girl, who only ever knew happiness.

I love you so damn much, Vi. You don’t get it yet. We’re lying here, wounded from a terrorist attack, and we can be this happy, just because it’s the two of us.

He drew a deep, deep breath and let it out in an exaggerated sigh of defeat. He glanced around to make sure Elias and Brandon hadn’t come back. He leaned in close to her ear and ow, that pulled at his wound, but he couldn’t risk saying this out loud. “It’s…
Chester
,” he whispered.

“Chester?” she said out loud, with that erotic precision and rolled R of hers.

“
Shhh
.” He waved his hands frantically.

“What’s wrong with that?”

“For God’s sake, you people don’t know anything about names here in France, do you? I’d better name our kids.”

“It does sound a little…presidential, maybe, for you.”

“We’ll consider it our safe word. If you ever say it out loud, I will instantly stop making love to you and go out for a run or something to rid myself of the horror.”

She laughed.

“No, seriously, Vi. I mean it. My name is Chase. I stopped answering to anything else when I was four. Chase Alvarado-Callihan, to be exact. Lenoir is going to be
so
much easier to spell.”

“You’re so damn cute,” she said helplessly.

A little smugness settled in his body. It was good to be cute. “Now you have to love me to the moon and back,” he said. “You said the name was all that was stopping you.”

She rested her hand against his cheek, splint and touch of callused fingers. Her face softened. The humor slid away, but all the happiness stayed, and it was the most radiant, warming thing. “I’m pretty sure I will.”

Chapter 18

Bold, squarish letters:

How about April for a date? The bluebonnets in Texas are beautiful then.

Under it, a drawing of two entwined wedding rings, and the signature,
Chase.

A cell phone number under his name.

Vi looked up at Chase. Who was actually
blushing
a little bit. “You wrote that the first night?”

They had just been released from the hospital, their first evening back in her apartment. Police security protected the door to the building. Chase’s identity had been kept out of the papers, but Vi’s was all over the place, and it turned out being a national hero drew an overwhelming amount of attention.

“It was three in the morning,” he said defensively. “And you have no idea how hot you are. I was sexually depleted and possibly sappy.”

“And right after that, you went and had my restaurant shut down without even warning me?”

His shoulders sank. “To keep you safe,” he said.

She glared at him.

“To keep the world safe,” he corrected. “And all your staff. And all your guests.”

She held up a finger. “You still should have told me about it. Keeping the staff and guests safe is
my
responsibility.”

He nodded resolutely. And then added, “Going on top-secret missions that affect multiple lives is mine.”

They gazed at each other a long, stubborn moment. Impossible really to tell who was the first one to start to smile just enough to encourage the other to smile, too. “I’m not giving in on this one,” Vi warned.

“I know. Of course, I’m not either.”

They both broke into bigger smiles. “You know it’s really kind of fun to box with someone who is up to your weight,” Vi said. “It doesn’t happen that often.”

Chase grinned at her and flexed one arm to make his biceps pop.

She laughed and returned her gaze to the phone number he had left her from the very first, and the drawing of wedding rings. He had left that note as he left her bed to go take over her career choices with macho conviction, hadn’t he? She shook her head at the impossible tangle of emotions he evoked. “It’s a good thing you have such good survival skills.”

“Five months and seven days left,” Chase said brightly.

She gave him a querying look.

“Until January 1. If I survive until then, you said. I was going to do little tally marks on the wall behind your bed like they do in prison movies or ones where people are stranded on a desert island. I get hot sex still, though, right? I mean, you’re not going to deny a man basic sustenance.”

She laughed and shook her head at him and turned the page in her journal.

Damn, you’re beautiful.

XO.

Chase.

She looked back at him.

He arched his head to try to see the page, and blushed some more. “That was the night you fell asleep. I was thinking I should probably go, but then…I didn’t.”

Her cheeks felt a little heated, too.
Damn, you’re beautiful.
She wanted to frame the words, to keep them for years and years and years.

She turned the page.

Got to make a quick trip out of town. Don’t mention it to anyone, okay?

A heart symbol this time, and
Chase.

And:

P.S. Call me maybe?

A funny stick figure holding a phone, giant tears arching out of his eyes and over his head an image of his heart breaking.

A smile trembled on her lips. Funny, demanding, arrogant Chase, who apparently had never once just walked out on her without making sure she knew he’d be back.

“I put it in a very obvious spot!” he said. “Pinned open by your alarm clock. How could you not have seen it?”

She leaned back on the pillows, demonstrating flinging her arm out to fumble and knock an alarm clock to the floor. She still couldn’t stretch her arm out far, the movement pulled too much at her torso.

“Fine,” he said. “Next time I’ll write it in Sharpie on your forehead so you can see it when you look in the bathroom mirror.”

“Or, alternatively, if you want to survive, you could try the bathroom mirror itself. Or a note on the door. Pretty nearly impossible for me to leave the apartment without seeing a note on the door.”

“I sometimes go out the window,” Chase confided. “Just to keep life interesting.”

Vi had to grin. “You do keep life interesting, all right.”

Chase looked smug, licked his finger, and drew a point in his favor in the air.

She laughed. It was a happy thought, all that life and interest and challenge and a willingness always to answer her own challenges, always to pick up her gauntlets.

“Speaking of keeping life interesting, you know what’s terrible about hospitals?”

“Oh, I could make a really long list at this point,” Vi said, a little grimly. Pretty much the only good thing she had found about hospitals so far was that hospitals were the reason they were both alive. It turned out survival could be quite a painful, tedious process full of doctors and nurses with no respect for a woman’s privacy, absolutely terrible food when Lina and Célie couldn’t sneak them some, and a relentless smell of antiseptic.

“The lack of sex.” Chase shook his head. “It’s insane what they expect a man to live without. Also, French daytime television is terrible, can I just say? There was some exercise show with the woman trying to convince other women to do step exercises in high heels. You people are nuts. Fortunately, it
did
give me some ideas about you and steps and high heels, but I’m saving those for a more-healed rainy day. Now for barely out of the hospital, thank God you’re alive, take it very easy sex, I was thinking…”

“That sometimes you talk too much.” Vi put her fingers over his lips. “
I
was thinking…” She turned off the light, gave them just that gentle twilight of the July summer evening. “…something like this.” She drew her fingertips very, very lightly, as if he was fragile, all the way down his arm to the back of his knuckles, then took his hand and covered her breast.

“Vi.” His voice had gone low and rough. “I’m so glad you’re alive that I wake up in nightmares about it, over and over.”

“I know.” And nightmares about everyone in her kitchens being killed, and about terrible, jagged things she couldn’t even identify before they woke her in sharp terror. She shifted his hand over her breast, stroking herself with him. The hunger that woke in her was sharp and ferocious, a tantalizing counterpoint to the gentleness with which they touched. “Tonight, let’s see if we find a way to get some sleep.”

Chapter 19

Healing

“What are you doing?”

“Planning a restaurant. I’ve got to do something while I’m convalescing. Besides, since I’m forced to learn delegation skills and how to run a restaurant while not being actually in it, I might as well put it to good use to expand to new horizons. And I’m internationally famous now. I’ve got
backers.
I’ve got ideas down for four more restaurants, but I’m thinking it’s probably better to open one at a time.”

“Have I mentioned how crazy I am about you?”

“What did I do this time?”

“You literally take a bullet, turn it into a convenient rung on your ladder, and keep on climbing. Nothing keeps you down.”

“Down’s not a fun place to be, to be honest. It’s pretty boring.”

“Let me see if I can keep you entertained.”

***

“Hard time sleeping?” Soft voice, in the dark.

“Oh, yeah.” Resigned. “I just see it, you know? All the time. See the muzzle start to point toward you, see that blood all over your chef’s jacket.”

“Yeah.” Very soft. “I know. I see things, too.”

No other words. Just the shifts of the sheets, the touch of skin, the sounds of holding on.

***

“What are you doing?”

“Oh, I…nothing.”

“What does that mean? Why do you look so guilty? Let me see that notebook. Chase, if you’re planning another secret mission to destroy my restaurant without telling me…”

“No! Damn it, you have a suspicious mind. I’m thinking about what I would like to do when—if—I get out. I keep having this vision of an adventure sports organization that gets disenfranchised kids out on the slopes or up in the air, gives them a source of physical accomplishment and power and adventure that doesn’t come from violence.”