Say You Will (Trust & Tequila Book 3)

16. Franki

sixteen

From my position in the front passenger seat, I glance back at the two foil-wrapped pies that sit in a box on the backseat of Henry’s SUV. “You’re an expert pie transporter. I’m not sure I would have thought of strapping them in with a seatbelt.”

For some strange reason, it made me think of what it would be like to watch him strap a child into a car seat. It was a weird, silly leap of logic, but Henry is so good at taking care of everything and everyone, and I still can’t shake it.

“I don’t want a quick stop to avoid hitting a deer to end with this car covered in pie,” he says.

I turn to face him as we make our way down the long country road. “Blackwater is an entirely different life than one in a city. It’s so peaceful and slow here. I wish we could stay forever.”

His expression turns thoughtful, but he says nothing in response.

“Did you like the bisque enough to eat it again?” I ask.

He glances my way and reaches out briefly to squeeze my hand. “Pumpkin bisque is my new favorite.”

“Are you fibbing?”

He shakes his head. “Not at all. If it were just soup, I’d say it was fine. But it’s not just soup.”

“What is it?”

Henry smiles, but the space between his eyebrows contracts in a frown, as if I asked him what letter comes after “C” in the alphabet. “It’s a memory.”

I lean back against the headrest. “It was fun.”

“Next time, we should have a chef prep the pumpkin for us.”

“Are you kidding me? That was the best part.”

My work phone vibrates, and I reach in my coat pocket. “Hey, Bronwyn. What’s up?”

“Are you with Henry?”

I look at my phone in consternation. How would she know? The man only kissed me this afternoon for the first time.

“I wouldn’t say with….”

“His location tracker says he’s only about ten minutes from the grocery store. And since you’re not here, either, I assumed the two of you must have run out for errands together.”

“Oh.” I laugh weakly. She meant “with” literally. As in, sitting beside him right now.

Her whole family uses their own security app that keeps them dialed in to each other’s location. She said they turn them off sometimes, but, for the most part, they’re all up in each other’s business all the time. I’m grateful it never occurred to my mother to use something like that.

The McRaes have a lot of security measures that might appear to be excessive to outsiders. Before we found our pumpkins, Henry had tossed a navy cardigan on like some kind of sexy Mr. Rogers, but beneath that cardigan he’s wearing a holster with a handgun in it. If the SUV we’re sitting in isn’t armored, I’d be shocked.

“Yes. I’m with Henry. You’re on speaker.”

“Perfect. Henry?”

“Bronwyn,” he drawls.

“If I text you a short list, can you stop by the store for me?”

“I’m certain you have staff for that.”

“Henry,” Bronwyn scolds.

The corner of his lip twitches. He is such a . . . rascal. It’s a silly, old-fashioned word. Something his grandma would say, but, good heavens, he teases like crazy. He likes to get people all flustered and annoyed, and half the time the people around him don’t even realize he’s doing it on purpose.

He twists his lips to the side briefly, then says, “For once, I’m not trying to be an ass. Franki needs a break.”

I look away in embarrassment. I never complained, but instead of feeling better with activity, my joint pain has gotten steadily worse today. I didn’t think he noticed.

After a brief silence, Bronwyn says hurriedly, “Sorry. Ugh. I’m an idiot. It’s no problem. I’ll have one of the housekeepers run out.”

“We’ll do it,” I say.

Henry looks my way, his brow furrowed.

He’s right that I need to give my knees a rest, but I also want to go to the store. I hesitate for a moment because the biggest part of me wants to pretend that I can always do what most people my age do. I’m also terrified that after this shopping trip, Henry will stop flirting with me.

But this is me, and, honestly, what is the point in having him attracted to me if I have to hide huge parts of who I am? So, I say it. “Any normal-sized grocery store will have either an electric scooter or a wheelchair. As long as Henry doesn’t mind if he has to give me a push.”

He looks pleased with my solution and gives me a nod. “No problem. You know your own body and what you need.”

If he weren’t driving, I’d launch myself at him and kiss him all over his sweet face.

“Are you sure?” Bronwyn asks doubtfully. “I didn’t think about how many hours you spent in the car and then whatever the two of you were already doing.”

“Send me the list, Bronwyn. I mean it. I’ll be very angry if you don’t.”

Bronwyn has a smile in her voice when she says, “You don’t sound angry. You sound like a preschool teacher offering to feed me cupcakes.”

Well, that’s annoying. “I’ll feed you something else. Something not a cupcake, and you won’t like it.”

Bronwyn snickers. “Are you threatening me with a knuckle sandwich?”

“I was thinking one of those disgusting protein shakes you said Dean drinks. I don’t know what a knuckle sandwich is.”

Henry presses his lips together, obviously fighting a smile. “She wanted to know if you were threatening to punch her in the mouth.”

Reaching for my hand with one of his, he curls my fingers in, guiding my thumb to wrap around the outside. Henry lifts my fist to graze his lips with my knuckles.

I gasp and pull my hand back to my lap.

“Never thrown a punch?” he asks.

I tighten my hand and imagine what that would be like to plow my fist into another person’s face. At the moment, Jonny’s comes to mind. I ignored his voicemail earlier. I’m sure it’s about Leo Kingston, and I don’t want to hear it.

I can picture myself hurting the guys who harassed me in the street. My mother’s boyfriend, David Vance, pulled the last one away from me, but I wish I’d been the one to deal with him.

“Does it hurt?” If I did punch someone, I’d probably injure myself more than I did the other person. My hands ache and burn often enough without impact. Even the thought of it makes me wince.

“Yeah, it hurts,” Bronwyn says. “How much depends on where the punch lands, whether you were ready for it, and how much force is behind it. Sucker punches are the worst.”

“She’s not asking if it hurts to be on the receiving end,” Henry corrects. “She wants to know if it hurts to be the one throwing the punch.”

“Oh. Yeah. It does. If you do it wrong or hit a bony area, you can break your hand. When you’re sparring, wrap your knuckles and remember to aim for soft places. Don’t get distracted by your own pain in a fight,” she says.

It takes a lot of pain to distract me. I’m used to it.

“But I don’t think punching anything, even a bag, would be a good idea for you,” she says. “Ask Henry to set you up with a firearm.”

“I don’t know . . .”

“Then a taser, at least. They only work about 50 percent of the time, but you know I think you should be carrying something after all the crap that’s happened to you.”

Henry’s brows snap together in a fierce frown. “Send the shopping list. We’ll see you when we’re done.” Jaw flexing, Henry reaches out and hits End Call on my phone.

I put the phone into my purse, then twist in my seat. I examine my hand, curling it back into that fist.

“Franki.” Henry’s voice is quiet, but there’s anger there. And resolve. “Give me a name.”

Startled, I glance his way. “What?”

He pulls the SUV off the road and onto the wide gravel berm, glancing in his rearview mirror with a lift of his hand. I frown, confused.

As Henry shifts his body toward me, his eyes have gone almost frighteningly flat. He folds my hand back into a fist and presses it gently into his palm. “You’re sitting here imagining what it would be like to fight back. Give me a name. Tell me who you need me to hurt.”

I sit, frozen, as I process his words. This is the first time he’s ever said the quiet part out loud. I’m not a naive teenager anymore, and I spent too much time in the McRae home not to have figured some things out in retrospect. Those missions he goes on aren’t government-sanctioned. That house has more than alarm systems and panic rooms. There isn’t a room in the place that doesn’t have a stash of weapons hidden inside the walls or secret drawer spaces accessed with a thumbprint. The security guards move like soldiers because they are soldiers. Henry doesn’t carry a knife strapped to his calf for slicing apples.

“Tell me,” he repeats.

I shake my head. “You’re not going out on some vigilante revenge mission on my behalf. I don’t need it.”

“No one hurt you?”

“I’ve been assaulted a few times by people who thought I was my mother. Imagine if you hadn’t been there in the hotel lobby to step in with those guys. It was that sort of thing. The last one tried to drag me into a car.”

Something chases behind Henry’s eyes, and I hurry to explain. “I wasn’t hurt badly. It was only a few bruises.”

It’s not true that I was unaffected, especially the most recent time, but Henry looks like he needs someone to walk him off a ledge. The look on his face is like nothing I’ve ever seen. I shiver at the blank sort of hardness that falls over him.

“What happened to the men who hurt you?” he asks softly.

I shake my head helplessly. “Nothing. They ran away. I couldn’t report it, so nobody even looked for them. The publicity would have been terrible for my mother.”

“I see. You were more worried about making your mother uncomfortable than your own safety.”

“That’s not fair. Negative publicity affects her livelihood. They were random acts of violence. Reporting one of those guys wouldn’t have stopped the next one.” I quote my mother directly.

“You didn’t consider that by not reporting it, you were leaving someone on the street who would go on to hurt another woman?”

“Yes, I considered it, but no one would have caught them. There was no point to making my mother’s life more difficult when nothing would have come from it.” I hate the way my voice shakes. I don’t like to think about any of it.

He leans back, giving me space. “I shouldn’t have said that. It’s easy for someone standing on the outside to judge.”

“You were primed to go after someone the moment you thought I was upset. I could have been picturing punching someone who cut me off in traffic.”

He rubs his chin and dips his head. “There’s such a thing as a proportional response. That’s not something I usually forget. You’re a much nicer person than I am.”

I shake my head, and he scalds me with his heated gaze.

“I don’t need anyone to blow smoke up my ass about who or what I am. Not even you. Remember what I said. You never need to worry about whether it hurts to throw a punch. I’ll be your fist. All you need to do is say the word.”

I take it for the vow it is. “Thank you.”

He leans down to drop a lingering kiss on my mouth, then he puts the vehicle back into Drive. “I’m also hooking you up with at least a taser and training you on how to use it. I’ll beat the shit out of anyone who comes at you, then you can shock the shit out of him.”

His comment startles a laugh out of me. “Oh my gosh. Henry.”

His lips twitch. “It’s always nice to have a plan.”