The sudden silence and stillness was deafening. Frisco started toward Tasha’s room, but stopped short at the sight of Mia quietly closing the little girl’s door.
“She’s already asleep,” she told him. “She was exhausted.”
Mia looked exhausted, too. Maybe this wasn’t a good time to talk. Maybe she just wanted to go home.
“Do you want a cup of tea?” Frisco asked, suddenly horribly uncertain.
She took a step toward him. “All I want right now is for you to hold me,” she said quietly.
Frisco carefully leaned his crutches against the wall and slowly drew her into his arms. She was trembling as she slipped her arms around his waist. He pulled her closer, held her tighter and she rested her head against his chest and sighed.
“Did you really ask the Alpha Squad for help?” she asked.
“Is that so hard to believe?”
Mia lifted her head. “Yes.”
He laughed. And kissed her. She tasted so sweet, her lips were so soft. He’d been crazy to think he could ever give her up.
“Were you really coming back to the cabin?” he asked her.
She nodded.
“Why? You said damn near all that there was to say pretty concisely. Your vision of the way my future might’ve been was pretty accurate—although I’m willing to bet you didn’t picture me drinking myself to death on a pink couch.”
“The way your future might’ve been…?”
There was such hope in her eyes, Frisco had to smile. “That’s not my future, Mia,” he told her. “That was my past. It was my father who drank himself into oblivion every night in front of the TV set. But I’m not my old man. I’m a SEAL. You were right. I’m still a SEAL. And it’s only my knee that got busted, not my spirit.”
“Oh, Alan….”
“Yeah, it hurts to know I’m not going to go on the active-duty list, but that’s the hand fate dealt me. I’m done wallowing,” he told her. “Now I’m going to get on with my true future. I’m going to talk to Joe Cat about that instructor position. And I’ve got Tash to think about, because Sharon’s gonna have to do time on those DUI charges even if the man she hit lives….”
Mia was crying. She was crying and she was laughing.
“Hey,” Frisco said. “Are you all right?”
“I’m great,” she told him. “And so are you. You made it, Alan. You’re whole again.” Her eyes filled with a fresh flood of tears. “I’m so happy for you.”
He was whole? Frisco wasn’t quite so sure. “I’m going to look for another place to live,” he told her, searching her eyes. “I figure if I sell this place, I can maybe get something a little closer to the base, maybe something on the water—something on the ground floor. Something big enough for me and Tash and maybe…you, too…?”
“Me?” she whispered.
He nodded. “Yeah, I mean, if you want to….”
“You want me to live with you…?”
“Hell, no. I want you to marry me.”
Mia was silent. Her eyes were wide and her lips slightly parted. She didn’t say a word, she just stared at him.
Frisco shifted his weight nervously. “I know you’re probably speechless with joy at the thought of spending the rest of your life with a man who owns a pink couch and—”
“Do you love me?”
Frisco could see from her eyes that she honestly didn’t know. How could she not know? Well, he realized, because for starters, he’d never actually said the words….
“You know, up at the cabin, when I said all those horrible things…?”
Mia nodded.
“What I really meant to say was that I’d fallen absolutely in love with you, and that I was terrified—both of what I was feeling, and of the thought of you ruining the rest of your life by spending it with me.”
She was indignant. “How could you have thought that?”
He smiled. “I still think it—I just figure I’ll work really hard to keep you happy and smiling, and you won’t even notice. You also won’t notice that when we vote, we cancel each other out.”
“Democracy in action,” Mia said.
“And maybe, someday—if you want—we could add ‘making babies’ to that list you started on my refrigerator,” he told her. “What do you say?”
“Yes,” Mia told him, emotion making her voice tremble. “I say oh, yes.”
Frisco kissed her.
And he was whole.
ISBN: 978-1-4268-0486-1
FRISCO’S KID
Copyright © 1997 by Suzanne Brockmann.
All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher, MIRA Books, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada M3B 3K9.
All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.
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