Leah Braemel - Personal Protection

“I would have gotten here sooner, but I’d been told you’d gone to Puerto Rico so I flew there first.” He stayed where he was, as if he sensed her reluctance to be near him.

Her gaze darted up to his then fluttered away again. He’d flown first to Puerto Rico and then all the way to New York? Surely that meant he wanted her back. Didn’t it?

“I had my ticket in my hand and was ready to go through security and then…” She didn’t think she could have survived making small talk while watching Jose and Elba coo over their new son, painfully aware that she wouldn’t be a mother any time soon. Besides her eldest brother would have asked why she’d decided to visit them on such a whim, and asked questions she didn’t want to answer. Not that her mother had been any better. “I just changed my mind, that’s all.”

“It’s a woman’s prerogative.”

She toyed with an angel her mother had hung on the tree, still not willing to look at him. “I wasn’t sure whether you’d want to see me again.”

He chuckled, but it held no humor in it. “I was thinking the same thing in the taxi coming over here. About whether you’d want to see me.”

“I wasn’t in on their plan, you know. Not until that day.” When I realized you were in love with a ghost.

“I know. I don’t blame you for anything that happened, if you’re worried about that.”

“I’m not.” She was.

Her mother bustled back in, carrying a tray loaded with two coffee cups from her grandmother’s special collection, and her grandmother’s sugar and cream set. “There, I’ll leave you two alone for a while. Call me if you need anything.”

Rosie perched on the couch and added two teaspoons of sugar to one cup. “You should be honored, Mama only uses this china for special occasions.”

“Rosie…”

She hurried to speak before he could say anything more. “My grandfather worked for a week building shelves for a jeweler when they’d first come to New York. He’d wanted to buy my grandmother a birthday present, but they didn’t have any money, so he negotiated with the jeweler that if he built the shelves, he could…” Why was she babbling? “…he could choose something of equal value in trade. It’s pretty, isn’t it?”

Sam knelt in front of her, placed one hand on her knee. His right hand. He wasn’t wearing the ring anymore. “If you don’t want me here, if I make you uncomfortable, or unhappy. I’ll leave. Just say the word.”

“Would you really leave if I asked you to?”

The expression on his face changed so she couldn’t read what he felt. “Do you want me to leave, Rosebud?”

His nickname sliced through her objections. “No. I don’t want you to leave.” She carefully placed the coffee cup back on the tray, grateful her hand didn’t shake betraying how everything inside her quaked and roiled. “But why are you here, Sam?”

“To tell you I love you.” He lifted his hand and stroked her cheek with the back of his knuckles. “To tell you you’d never come second to anyone in our relationship.”

“I love you too. But I also know you were right that day. About love not being like a light switch you flip on or off. You can’t tell me that in the two days since I last saw you, you’ve been able to forget about Jill.”

“Jill will always be a part of me, Rosie.” He touched a finger to her grandmother’s coffee service, ringing the top of the empty cup. “Same as your grandparents will always be part of you. Same as your mother and father, and your brothers and sister, will always be in your heart.”

“It’s not the same.”

“No, it’s not. But it doesn’t mean I don’t have room for you too. I promise Jill’s memory won’t ever come between us. When I’m with you, I don’t think of her. But I don’t know how to convince you of that. I can’t hand you something concrete to prove it, I wish I could.”

So did she. Still he’d removed the ring, that was a start. But had he hung onto it? Was it still tucked away somewhere safe for him to look at now and then? Or had he gotten rid of it?

“If you’re wondering what I did with the ring, I asked Mark to send it to Jill’s parents.”

Feeling guilty over the relief flooding through her, Rosie turned her hand over and twined her fingers with his. “Jill was only part of why I left, Sam.”

“Oh?” His voice was a study in casualness but from the way his fingers dug into hers for a moment before gentling his grip, she knew he was forcing himself not to react.

“There’s the question of how you didn’t respect me as an operative. How you wouldn’t let me do my job.”

A moment passed before he said, “I told you at the start not to try to get between me and a bullet.”

Especially you, she heard him not say.

“I thought Robert was a sniper. You were my principal. That’s what Hauberk hired me to do. To protect our clients.”

“So you threw yourself on top of me prepared to take the bullet in my place. That wasn’t a tactically sound move, Rosebud. You should have just taken me down out of the line of fire, and sought backup. If you’d been shot, I’d have been just as vulnerable as if you hadn’t been there at all.”

“A tactically sound move?” She narrowed her eyes. “What about you racing into the club when you thought I was being held hostage, huh? You charged in, expecting to have to fight for me even though they’d taken your weapons at the gate.”

He opened his mouth to speak but she barreled over him. “Yet still you came. Unarmed. Unprepared. Alone. Did you even think of calling the police? The SWAT team or hostage negotiation? Nope. Big old Sam Watson walked straight into a trap. You deliberately put yourself in harms’ way. Now tell me that was a tactically sound move.”

“That was different.”

“No, it wasn’t. In fact it was worse than what I did on the terrace.” She poked her finger into his sternum, pushing until he lost his balance and fell back with an oomph. “What you’re saying is that you’re allowed to sacrifice yourself, but I’m not allowed to. So what does that mean, Sam? That I’m not allowed to love you as much as you love me?”

He clambered to his feet. “It’s not a matter of allowed or not allowed, or who loves who more. It’s about how I don’t want to lose you, and I hope you don’t want to lose me either.” He held up his hand stopping her from speaking. “It’s got nothing to do with Jill or anything Thalia or Chad said at the club. I love you, Rosie. I want to spend the rest of my life with you. I want to get you pregnant and have children that I can teach to ride a bike and throw a football.”

“You want children?” she spluttered, unable to form a coherent thought. The course of this conversation had taken a turn she hadn’t expected. The hope she’d squelched when she thought about Jose and Elba cooing over their new baby boy flared up, sensing a fresh source of oxygen.

Great, if he was this protective of her when she wasn’t pregnant, think what Sam would be like when she was. She’d barely be able to make a move without him coddling her.

Is that so bad? Yes! She might as well be living at home, dependent upon Mama and Papa. She’d spent too long gaining her independence to give it up now. But somehow she also knew Sam’s type of coddling would be different than Mama’s. It probably meant spending long hours in bed with him.

Sam sat on the couch and pulled her onto his lap, resting his forehead against hers. “Come back to D.C. with me, Rosie. Give me a fresh start. Let me take you out on a date, go with me to a restaurant, maybe a movie. Just Sam and Rosie, not Samuel Watson and his bodyguard for once.”

“We skipped that part, didn’t we? Dating, I mean.”