Chapter 16
“ A rrêtez !” A man in uniform was shouting at them in French to stop. He had fired his gun into the air to get their attention.
“Now is when we run,” Ethan said, grabbing Amelia’s hand and dragging her behind him. With her free hand, she held up her robe. She was in good shape and worked out most days, but she had nothing on him. They darted into a large grove of nearby trees and hid.
“Calm your breathing,” he whispered. “Be silent. Don’t move.”
She wasn’t sure why she needed to be quiet. Their presence had disturbed the monkeys and birds that were now shrieking all around them. If the guard could hear her breathing over all of that, he must be bionic. But she did as she was told, trying hard to calm her racing heart and erratic breathing. When he was certain the guard had given up on them, Ethan sat up and rested his head on the tree behind them.
“We’re going to have to go at night,” he whispered. “I had no idea they patrolled this patch so diligently.”
“What would happen if they caught us?” she asked.
“Hard to say. Best case scenario, we get arrested. Worst case scenario, we get killed or kidnapped and…
“Sold into slavery,” she finished the sentence for him. “Is there any scenario on this entire continent where that’s not your imagined worst possible ending for me?”
“There is one more that keeps me up at night. I do all the hard work of getting you safely to the embassy, and then your boyfriend shows up with a ring and sweeps you off to a wedding.”
“Piedmont doesn’t like the idea of flying over the ocean,” she said.
“Why? In first class they’ll give him another fluffy robe,” he said.
“You have to let the robe thing go.”
“I’ve never worn a robe in my life. There are robe men, and then there are not. I am not,” he said.
“You barely wear pants, Becket. If it were up to you, you’d wear boxers everywhere.”
“No, I very much wouldn’t. I would be al fresco, as God intended.”
She groaned and put her hands over her ears. “That’s way, way too much information for our level of friendship.”
“You’d better get used to it because eventually these clothes are going to come off in your presence, and you’ll be lucky if I ever put them back on again,” he warned.
“Don’t let my mother hear you talk like that. She has explicit ideas about how ladies and gentlemen should talk, especially in mixed company.”
“When am I going to meet your mother?” he asked.
“Didn’t you meet her at the wedding?”
“Yes, but that was in my capacity as Ridge’s groomsman. I need to re-meet her in my capacity as your special friend, wink, wink.”
“You don’t say wink, wink.”
“I just did,” he said.
“No, I mean you’re supposed to wink, wink.”
“That’s what I did. Amelia, look.” He pointed to his eye and winked. “Wink, wink.”
“Ethan, look.” She pointed to her eye and winked twice. “See, the words aren’t necessary. You don’t have to narrate everything your body does. No one says ‘breathe, breathe,’ or ‘swallow, swallow,’ or ‘walk, walk.’”
“What else can you teach me about life, smart girl?” he asked, leaning against the tree and smiling at her.
“So many things. I don’t know where to begin,” she said.
“You might as well start now. This is going to be a long day of waiting,” he noted.
“I’m guessing you’ve had more than your share of those,” she said. When he nodded, she continued. “What did you guys do to pass the time, back in the day?”
“We talked.”
“About what?”
“Women mostly,” he said. “But also other random things. We shared stories, opened up, spilled our guts.”
“Let’s do that,” she said.
“You can’t plan to do it. It happens naturally.”
“That’s because you’re a man.”
“Thank you for noticing; I’ve been working hard at it,” he said.
“What I meant was that women don’t have to naturally evolve into friendships. We sit down and talk about things on purpose. Let me show you how it’s done: What was your first job?”
“Lifeguard at the local pool.”
She rolled her eyes.
“What?” he asked.
“I’m picturing the hordes of teenage girls who tried to drown in your presence on a daily basis,” she said.
“There were a lot, and there was one legit almost drowning. He was a two-year-old little boy whose mom became distracted by another kid. All of a sudden I looked over and this boy was standing in water over his head, arms up, not thrashing, not moving, just standing there. And that’s what drowning looks like. So I jumped in, pulled him out, and gave him mouth to mouth while someone called an ambulance. He coughed up an ocean of water, but he was fine.”
“That’s amazing,” she said.
“It was my first taste of saving someone, and I was kind of hooked after that. I knew I wanted to do something in public service, something to help others.”
“Do you ever wonder if someday in heaven you’ll see all the people you’ve saved?” she asked.
“I spend more time worrying I’ll be somewhere else with all the people I’ve killed,” he admitted.
She petted his head, frowning.
“Hey, I just realized something. Last week Ridge said you’re twenty three. How is it possible you’re another year older?”
“I don’t know, but it keeps happening every year. I’m beginning to think it’s some sort of code or pattern,” she said.
“I missed your birthday, huh?”
She nodded.
“Ugh, I’m so sorry. I’m really bad with stuff like that. I feel terrible.”
“It’s fine. My therapist and I had a productive discussion for several hours about it, and I feel in time I’ll be able to move on,” she said, smiling.
“No, it’s bad. You made my birthday so fun, and I didn’t even talk to you on yours,” he said.
“Um, yes, you did,” she said.
He covered his face. “I’m the worst person in the world.”
“Ethan, some people are into birthdays, and some are not. It’s no big deal. My dad’s not into it. My mom has to twist his arm just to get him on the phone to say ‘happy birthday, love you, hon.’ Besides, I think I know a way you can make it up to me.”
He dropped his hands from his face, intrigued by her suddenly warm tone. “Yeah?”
She nodded and reached for his hand, holding it in both hers as she caressed it. “You could fly fifteen hours, jump out of a plane in the dead of night, rescue me from four armed guards, and lead me to safety.”
“Does this time count?” he asked.
“What am I, a used piece of meat? Of course this time doesn’t count. I’m going to need you to do it again.”
“You are so high maintenance,” he said. He brought her hand to his mouth and began kissing her fingertips, but the monkeys overhead grew restless at the movement. Sitting back, he let go her hand and resumed their game.
“What was your first job?” he prompted.
“Math tutor.”
“I would have been frigging Michelangelo if you had been my tutor,” he said.
“He wasn’t a mathematician,” she told him.
“And if you had been my tutor, I would know,” he said.
“First kiss,” she said.
“Yes, please,” he said, leaning in.
She put up a hand to halt him. “Who was your first kiss?”
“I want to say it was a girl with a name of some sort, possibly she also had hair and a face.”
“You don’t remember?”
“There were a lot of girls and a lot of kisses. I was ten and the first of my friends to kiss a girl, that much I remember. What about you?”
“I was twelve, and I was feeling left out because I was one of the last of my friends to kiss a boy. But I was kind of iffy on whether I was interested in boys yet or not, so I grabbed a random boy from my class and kissed him. But I wasn’t satisfied with the result. So I kissed him again and then a few more times until I felt I got it right.”
“Well, this marks the first time I’ve ever envied a twelve year old boy.”
“He was a little dazzled, poor kid. He followed me around for two years after that, until his family moved away.”
“Is Bonvoy your first serious relationship?” he asked.
“I dated a boy for two years in high school. I really thought I was going to marry him.”
“What happened?” he asked.
“We were going to go to separate colleges and didn’t want the burden of a long distance relationship. It was very amicable, very friendly. We had a nice, rational conversation, wished each other well, and hugged goodbye. Then I went home, crawled into bed beside my big brother, Johnny, and cried for four solid hours while he consoled me.”
“Aw, you’re giving me the sads. Anyone else?”
She shook her head. “A few months here and there in college, but no one special. What about you? Have you ever dated anyone seriously?”
“If you consider a second date serious, then still no,” he said.
She blinked at him. “You’ve never even had a second date with a woman?”
He blew out a breath. “What do you want me to say here, Amelia? That I’m a player? Fair enough.”
“How about that you’re scared? That you believe if you let a woman get too close to you, she’ll see the real you, beneath the dashing, charming veneer. That maybe she won’t like what she sees and she’ll go away. So you reject her before she rejects you.”
“I thought all that was covered by the player description,” he said.
“Am I the first woman who has tried to get her claws into you?” she asked.
“No, but you’re the only one who’s come close,” he said.
She looked away, off into the distance, watching a couple of monkeys in a treetop groom each other. “Don’t stop playing. Ask me something else, anything,” he prompted.
“When was the first time you lost someone close to you?”
“Before I joined up, no one. After, I don’t have enough fingers and toes to count them. What about you?”
“Maggie was engaged to this guy, Sam. He was like a part of our family, a really great guy. We all adored him. He got into a car accident and died two months before their wedding. It was horrible, heartbreaking, and awful.” She glanced at him sideways. “Why do you look like that?”
“Because I was blessed with good DNA?” he tried.
“No, you have the same expression you used to get when you tried to pretend you went to Canada on business.”
“It’s nothing.”
She sat up on her knees, looking behind him.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“Checking to see if your pants are actually on fire.”
“Amelia, come on.”
“You said you were going to tell me things,” she reminded him. She pinned him with a stare, and he actually squirmed.
“It goes against protocol. It goes against everything,” he said.
She continued to stare at him until he broke.
“He didn’t die,” he blurted. “Sam, the guy, he faked his death because he was in a terror cell. When he reappeared, they used Maggie to get to him. Things got dicey, we had to rescue her.”
“I remember that. Her cheek was bruised when I came to visit. She wouldn’t tell me why. Sam is really alive?”
He nodded. “I saw him myself.”
She blinked a couple more times and then burst into tears. “Oh, no,” he muttered, reaching for her and trying to soothe her, or at the very least trying to keep her quiet.
“You’re upsetting the monkeys,” he whispered, and that made her laugh enough to stop the tears.
“I’m sorry. It was such a hard time for our family, for Maggie, and it was all pretend. What she must have gone through, seeing him again.”
“It turned out all right. She has Ridge now.”
Amelia nodded, sniffling. “If she chose him over Sam, she must love him more than I even realized. I want a love like that.” She looked away, blushing. “I mean, you know, someday, with someone.”
“I do, too,” Ethan agreed. “Someday, with someone.”
Just not with me, Amelia thought. She sat back, putting distance between them.
“You’re doing the thing again, the pouty girl thing where you withdraw and ignore me,” he complained.
“No, I’m doing the human thing where I have an emotion and allow instead of suppress it,” she argued.
‘That’s still a girl thing.”
“Why are you not afraid of anything in the world except commitment?” she asked.
“Whoa, going straight for the kill shot there, aren’t you?” he said, shifting uncomfortably.
“You jump out of airplanes, you swim unbelievable lengths, you physically rescue people from danger, you shoot guns, you fight with your hands, you have no fear, but you won’t return a woman’s phone call. Why?”
“Because the other things are, at least somewhat, within my control. If I fail, I’m the only one who gets hurt. If I fail at a relationship, I’m failing someone else. I’m letting someone down.”
“That’s the whole point of love, to take a risk on someone else. Without the risk, there can be no reward,” she said.
“Get back to the game. Ask me something else.”
“I’m tired.” She pressed her thumb to her forehead. “You ask a question.”
“How many men have you said I love you to?” he asked.
“Now who’s going in for the kill shot?”
He nudged her. “Still waiting on an answer.”
She locked eyes with him. “One. How about you?”
“None. Yet,” he said, then he cradled her face in his hands and kissed her.