Page 117 of Off the Grid
She understood. They still had a lot to figure out. “So is mine. What about after it’s safe?”
“You don’t want me to be a SEAL?” He looked devastated.
“I didn’t say that. Do you want to be married to a reporter?”
“Not unless she’s you.” Seeing that wasn’t going to be enough, he added, “I would never ask you to give up what you do. I’m sure there will be times when I don’t like what you are writing, but I will never ask you to put aside your work for me again. I never should have done that. I hope you will forgive me.”
She already had after the first fifty times he’d apologized at Kate’s house while they were waiting for Colt.
“What if I decide to write an exposé on secret SEAL teams?”
He lost a little color in his face and swallowed as if he were eating a rotten egg. “As long as you weren’t publishing anything you’d gotten from me, I would probably try to convince you not to, but if I couldn’t, I would deal with it.”
Good thing for him she never had any intention of writing an article like that. Not all conspiracies needed to be uncovered; some secrets kept him safe. He seemed to realize she was testing him and turned it back on her. “What about you? Are you going to be okay with me gone for months and not able to tell you anything about where I am or what I’m doing?”
It was her turn to swallow hard on something that wasn’t very palatable. “Nothing? Not even a tiny hint?”
He crossed his arms in front of the spectacular chest she admired so much and shook his head. “Nada.”
She made a face. “Then I guess I’ll have to try to deal with it, too.”
He grinned. “Does that mean...?” He took her into his arms again. “Will you marry me?”
She smiled back at him and nodded, her eyes filling with tears of happiness. “But wait! Didn’t you say something about naked and swinging a baton?”
“You didn’t just make a dick joke in the middle of my proposal?”
She laughed. “I guess we’ll have to leave that part out when we tell the kids.”
“Kids? Don’t you think I should get used to the cat first? What’s its name?”
“Ariel.”
It didn’t take him long to figure out.“The Little Mermaid?”
She nodded. The statue they’d seen on their second sightseeing day in Copenhagen.
He bent down and covered her mouth with the sweetest, most tender kiss he’d ever given her.
A kiss that led to that naked-and-baton part of the proposal that she’d been looking forward to.
It was a long time later, when they were lying in bed, that Ariel came out of her hiding place. She’d apparently decided that John was all right because instead of seeking out Brittany, she snuggled next to him.
Traitor.Brittany knew she should have gotten a boy cat. “Maybe I should change her name to Brutus?”
He started laughing much harder than the joke warranted. His eyes were twinkling when he finally stopped.
“What?” she asked, leaning over to prop herself on his chest.
“Brutus is taken.” She gave him a look that told him she had no clue what he was talking about. “I hope Ariel likes dogs, because I arranged to have the platoon dog sent here from Honolulu. Brand used to take care of him when we were at the base.”
Brittany fell back on the pillow. Brutus. Oh jeez. So much for no personal life. She now had a kitten, a dog, a house, and a fiancé.
And she’d never been happier in her life.
