Engage (6 page)

“Can I see one of your pieces?”

“No way,” he said. “Well, maybe one day. They’re nothing special.”

I smiled, suspecting that anything Henry did was the opposite of
nothing special.
“So what you said back in Gainesville,” I started, knowing he had nowhere to run. I was sure; I’d locked the front door. “That you got out of the service because of me. What did you mean?”

His nostrils flared. “It doesn’t matter. I shouldn’t have said anything.”

“Why wouldn’t it matter? It has to do with me.”

“Because you’re involved with someone,” he said. “It wouldn’t do you any good if I told you that I got out because I wanted to make you my first priority, that I didn’t want to be separated from you any longer. What would it serve if I told you that I’m still in love with you and I would follow you wherever you went?”

I was grinning by the time he was done. “You’re right,” I said. “It wouldn’t serve anything.”

“That’s what I thought,” he said, playing with the label on the beer bottle.

“Except that Seth and I broke up.”

His head snapped up. “What?”

“You heard me.”

He shifted in his seat, reaching into his pants pocket. A second later, he placed an object onto the table with a loud thunk, his hand hiding it from view.

“What do you have there?” I asked nervously.

He lifted his hand and revealed a pebble in the shape of a wonky star.

“I thought you’d lost it,” I said, picking it up and turning it in my hands, remembering the day I’d found it. I had been sitting on the sand, just thinking about Henry when I felt something poking the back of my thigh. I’d picked the rock up and thought it a fitting symbol as both the boy and the rock were pains in my ass.

“I thought I had, but I was cleaning out my closet before PCSing out of Korea and found it in an old running shoe.” He gazed at me for a long time. “Do you remember what you told me that day at the beach?”

“That you were the same at the core.”

“Well that, but you also gave it to me so I could remember you,” he gently plucked the rock from my fingers. “The day I saw that rock again, I
remembered
you. I found it again at the exact time that I needed to. Finding this rock again was a sign from the universe that I had to make my way back to you before it was too late.”

He placed the rock on the table between us. “This morning I knew I was already too late but I put that damn rock in my pocket anyway. I was going to give it to you as a parting gift when you finally told me to hit the road, so that every time you looked at it, you would remember me.” He looked down at the rock and then up at me. “Tell me I get to keep this rock, Elsie,” he breathed.

I couldn’t look away as our eyes were welded together. I wanted so much to believe him and his pretty words. “How do I know you won’t just leave me again and go on another self-finding walkabout?”

He shook his head. “I won’t. Give me a chance to prove it.”

“I already gave you a chance and you blew it.”

“Then give me another,” he said firmly. He stood from his seat and crouched down in front of me. “Just give me… three dates to make it up to you and erase every doubt in your mind. And at the end of those three dates, if you still don’t believe that I’m here to stay, then I will give you back the rock.”

“This is an old deal, Henry,” I said with a raised eyebrow. “One that you lost.”

“I’m making you a better deal,” he said, resting his palms on my legs. “I’m betting everything.”

“I want the motorcycle if you lose,” I said with a grin.

“You can have the Volvo too if you’d like.”

“Okay.”

“Okay?” he asked with eyes wide. “You’ll give me three days and I can take you anywhere, do anything?”

“Within reason.”

“Anything?” he asked with a saucy smile and a wagging eyebrow.

I snickered. “To a point.”

“Can I give you a
point
?”

I smacked him on the arm and laughed, feeling a renewed sense of optimism. The self-preserving part of me was shouting to take cover, but the other part—the one who’d run back out to the fray without armor—wanted nothing more than to give Henry his chance. Everybody, including the man who had completely devastated my heart, deserved a second chance, right?

Despite the tears I’d shed the past year and a half and the vows I’d made to myself that I would never get hurt again, deep down I was still the same hopeful girl. I still wanted my happily ever after with Henry, damn it. If that made me stupid, then so be it.

“So, New Henry,” I began with a thundering heart, “your assignment is to make me fall in love with you in three dates or less. You think you can handle that?”

“I will do more than handle it,” he said with that ornery look I’d known so well. He gave my legs a squeeze as he stood up and headed towards the door. “And Elsie?”

“Yeah?”

“Challenge accepted.”

~

CAPTURE, the final installment in The DISARM Series, is due out mid-December 2012.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Thank you to my husband, who not only answers my questions but has also taken on more duties around the house so I can write.

To my beta readers: Beth, Lara, Alicia, Kerry, and Shannon. Your input is invaluable!

To my editor at Clean Leaf Editing: thank you, thank you, thank you. What a wild ride, huh?

Thank you once again to the reviewers. If I could hug each and every one of you, I would!

Again and always, thank you to the readers who have been so
engaged
in this series. I’m sorry for actively trying to make you cry. ;)

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