Five Days Grace (45 page)

"You have an answer for everything?" Sam asked finally.

"I hope so, Sir."

Sam grumbled a bit more, then asked the other two to give him and Aidan a minute alone.

Shit,
Aidan thought. How much harder could the questions get?

But Sam, looking unsure of himself for the first time, maybe even worried, finally asked quietly, "Why the hell would she tell you all this and not tell us? Her family?"

And then Aidan knew, it cut deep inside this man, inside this family, that she hadn't turned to them. "I think," he said carefully, "she was so used to being the happy one, the girl with the perfect life. And that's what she told me, that she'd had an absolutely perfect life, with the best parents anyone could want. She just didn't know how to be a woman whose life was a mess, someone all of you were worried about and felt like you needed to help."

"Well, that's crap," Sam said, sounding hurt more than anything else.

Aidan nodded. "But if you've never been the person who needed help, it's not easy to accept it. I found that out myself in the last year. I pushed a lot of people away, and I haven't even told my family the things I've told Grace about what happened to me in Afghanistan."

"Why?" Sam demanded.

"I guess I knew how hard it would be for them to hear it. That it would scare them and hurt them, and I didn't want to do that to them."

"Even if you needed them?"

Aidan nodded. "I'm not saying it was smart, but that's what I did."

Sam got quiet. Aidan started thinking he might be making some headway and decided to push the advantage.

"Look, Sir, I know we met under... unfortunate circumstances, and I'm truly sorry about that. But we have a number of things in common. One, we both love her. And two, she told me how she came to be your daughter. About you and your wife losing one baby girl and being given another one. Do you consider it a miracle? Grace showing up in your life the way she did?

"Yes, I do," her father said. No doubts there.

"Well, so do I," Aidan said. "I don't know if I deserve to have her in my life, but I consider it a miracle that I do, and I will do anything within my power to make her happy."

* * *

"Well, it wasn't a disaster," Aidan said, as he drove them back to Grace's house after the party.

"No, I think you did good," she said, wanting to reassure him. "I know they're a lot to handle, especially when the guys are in full protective mode."

"So, why do you look so worried?" he asked.

She sighed, just couldn't hold it in.

"What did I do, honey? Come on too strong? I worried about finding the middle ground. If I didn't come on strong enough, they wouldn't respect me, but I wanted them to know I respect them, too, and how much they love you."

"It's nothing like that. Just... Mom asked weeks ago, and she brought it back up again today to me." Grace took a breath and asked the question she'd been dreading asking all this time. "Whether you're going back to Afghanistan someday or some other place like that."

"Oh." He took her hand and squeezed it for a second as they pulled into her driveway. "We need to talk about that."

And Grace knew, just by the tone of his voice, that he was going back.
God.
Her stomach lurched. Dread flooded through her. He was really going back?

"No, wait. Don't do that. Let me explain," he said.

They got out of the car, just him and her. Lizzie, as a special request for her birthday, had asked if Tink could have a sleepover, and Tink had gone happily. Next to Grace, Lizzie was his favorite. Inside, Aidan steered Grace to the sofa and sat down on the coffee table facing her.

"There's a little part of this that's going to be hard, and I'm sorry for that," he said. "But it's something I have to do, and after that, it's all good."

"A little part?" Because she didn't consider it little.

"Bad choice of words on my part. A hard thing, but quick. Promise. The guy we were after in Afghanistan when everything went to hell? We still haven't gotten him, but we're close. Really close. He's supplying weapons to terrorists, Grace, and I need to be there when we get him. I have to, for all those guys we lost."

"You really are going back?" She winced, and he squeezed her hands, hanging on.

"Just for a month, maybe six weeks, and not into the field. I'll be at some kind of command center, staring at a computer most of the time, monitoring radio communications, analyzing data. I have to be there when they bring him in."

"Why you?"

He took her face in his hands. "Baby, I'm the only person on our side who's ever actually seen the guy. I have to ID him."

"Oh."

"Yeah." He kissed her softly, gently, and gave her a sad smile. "And once we catch him, I want to be the one to do the initial interrogation. It was my op. I know it better than anybody. Grace, I need to be able to tell the families of the men we lost that we got this guy. It's the only thing I can do for them now. We'll catch him, and then we'll shut down his whole network, although I'm going to leave that last part to someone else. After I get back to the States, I'm leaving the Navy."

She blinked up at him, feeling guilty about how relieved she was. "You're sure?"

He nodded.

"Because I wouldn't ask you to give up a career you love. I can't stand the idea of you being in that kind of danger again, of losing you, but I couldn't ask you to give it up, either."

"I'm not giving anything up," he insisted. "I'm making a choice about the kind of life I want. I'm going to raise kids with this woman in Ohio, if she'll have me. You should be thinking about that. If you'll have me."

"Because that's really in question?" she said. "Whether I'll have you?"

He grinned. "I want to be here, every day. I don't want to miss anything. It's going to be too good to miss."

"Yes, it is. So good."

"And I think I've done enough. My CO said that. That I've done enough, and damned lucky to come out of it alive and getting around as easily as I am. It could have been so much worse. I know that. I'm a lucky man."

"So, what are you going to do with yourself? If you're not in the Navy?"

"There are all sorts of agencies gathering and analyzing intelligence, even right here. There's an FBI field office in Cincinnati, a Joint Terrorism Task Force, and a couple of other inter-governmental agencies working together to keep people safe."

"And that's going to be enough for you? Because I want you to be happy."

"Baby, if you're here and our kids are here, what could be more important to me than keeping this place safe?"

"You'd stay here? I didn't think that was a possibility."

"For a while, at least. I thought it would be important to you to be close to your family right now. They're going to worry about how quickly this happened. I want them to know you're safe with me. And later, who knows? Maybe I'll actually join the FBI and love the Cincinnati field office so much I never want to leave. Maybe they'll let me stay forever."

"The FBI? Really? That sounds a little bit scary, but not nearly as bad as Afghanistan."

He grinned. "They go to work in suits and ties everyday, Grace. How dangerous could it possibly be?"

* * *

He left in May, and Grace gained a new understanding of what military spouses endure and how strong they have to be. She was in awe, actually, to think about going through deployment after deployment. How did they do it?

True to his word, five weeks later, she got the call she'd been waiting for.

"Grace, it's done. We got him. I'm coming home."

She cried, even more than she had after she'd said good-bye to him.

He asked her to meet him at the lake, on the dock in front of what was left of Maeve's cabin, and four days later she did. When she walked around the side, she saw him standing at the end of dock, the way toward him lit by hundreds of little lights.

She ran to him and threw herself into his arms, feeling them close around her, feeling the solidness of his body, the warmth, snuggling against him with her face buried in that space between his shoulder and his jaw that she loved so much.

It was absolutely the best place she knew, the best place on earth, in his arms.

They laughed, kissed. She cried, ran her hands over his face, his hair, marveling in the reality that his mission was done. He was back, whole and safe, and nothing stood in their way, and if trials loomed ahead—and they would, because life worked that way—they'd face them together. She thought they could handle anything together.

"Hello, beautiful," he said finally, grinning down at her.

"Hi," she said, still running her hands over him, trying to convince herself he was real and here and hers.

"I've waited a long time for this."

"Me, too."

"And I want to do it right," he said, turning so serious on her. "I've been planning for so long. I want to say the exact, right words, and dammit, I still don't have them."

She kissed him softly. "You're worried you won't get the answer you want, unless you come up with exactly the right words? Really?"

"I'm saying I want to give them to you. I want you to know exactly how I feel, how important you are to me, how grateful I am to have you and how flat-out amazed I am that you're here, and you're mine. The best way I've figured out to say that is to tell you what I told your father."

"You saw my Dad?" That surprised her. And sounded very old-fashioned to her. "Before you saw me?"

"I told your father this the first time I met him." Aidan shook his head, smiling, but still uneasy about that meeting. "Well, no, not that first time. When you took me to the house for Lizzie's birthday party."

"Oh. I do think he liked you a little bit more after that."

"Yeah. I was trying to explain to him that I knew how lucky I was, how amazing you are and how much I loved you, that he and I had that in common. I asked him if he considered it a miracle—you showing up on his doorstep all those years ago. And he said that he absolutely did. I told him so did I."

"Oh." She felt fresh tears coming. Her two guys.

"Luckiest day of my life, Grace. The day you showed up. I know it. You're my miracle."

He put his hand in his pocket and brought it out a moment later holding a pretty, sparkly diamond ring between them. "I will love you and cherish you forever. I will do my absolute best to never, ever hurt you, and I will stand between you and the rest of the world to keep you safe and happy. I don't care what happens, what kind of problems come along. That won't ever change. We can face anything together, I swear. Please, please, Grace, marry me."

She smiled so big her face started to hurt, the smile making it hard to even speak. "Wow, for a guy who was worried about not having the right words..."

"I meant every one of them," he said.

"I know you do. And I feel the exact same way. We can handle anything together, and I know every day of my life is better with you in it. I don't ever want to be without you."

"Say it," he insisted. "Say yes."

"Yes," she said, as he slipped the ring on her finger.

It was so pretty, a dainty band made of tiny diamonds, holding a sparkly, square-cut diamond.

"Do you like it?" he asked.

"It's perfect."

"I described the kind of art work you do to the jeweler, and your house, the way it's decorated. He said you sounded classy and a little whimsical, and then he showed me about three dozen rings. I thought this was the prettiest one."

"I'm sure it is," she agreed.

"I wanted to get that absolutely right, too," he said.

"You get nearly everything absolutely right, all the time, Aidan. And this was perfect."

"Good. So, how do you want to do this? Do you want some big, complicated thing? Because, we can do that, if that's what you want. You can have whatever you want, Grace."

"I just want you. What do you want?"

"To have it done. To be married to you, sooner rather than later. That's my only request."

"How soon? Months, weeks, days?"

"Yeah. Any of that would work for me."

Astonished, she asked, "Days?"

"Okay, we can say that's not a serious consideration. Weeks are fine. Months, too, as long as it's not too many. It's June. Say by Christmas? Deal?"

"Yes," she agreed. "Deal."

The End