Page 98 of Building Courage

He grinned. “Yeah, she is. How long did she talk to you?”

“About an hour.”

“She can do that.” He gave her a sideways glance. “She didn’t ask about our sex life, did she?”

Brynn laughed. “No.”

“She has no filter and at times I think, damn I wish she hadn’t told me that.”

Brynn laughed again. “She told me about your mother.”

He nodded. “She talks about her now and then with me. I was so young when she died. But sometimes I catch a glimpse of a memory, not about the accident, but how she smelled or the tone of her voice.”

Emotion reared up inside her and glazed her vison with tears. “I’m sorry.”

He nodded.

“Watching you on board that boat yesterday, as terrified as I was for you, I finally got why you do what you do. It isn’t about killing. You had every opportunity to shoot that man yesterday, yet you took another route to keep from being forced to do it. It’s about protecting the innocent. Protecting people who can’t protect themselves. And it’s about standing between innocents and violence.”

He gave her hand a squeeze. “It’s mostly about all of that. But because I’m a highly trained operator…I have an unfair advantage, even against men like Meeks, Gardner, and Forrest. It boils down to the fact that I can fight a war on foreign soil, but I can’t fight one on ours.”

She understood what he was saying. “You still got the job done and saved lives, Tucker. You and Denotti saved mine and Jess’s.”

He squeezed her hand and bent his head to kiss it, and her heart turned over. “That drive from the airport to the marina was the longest of my life. I thought we’d be too late to stop them.”

After being trapped in the car with a gun pointed at the back of her head for forty minutes, she understood what he meant. “We made it.”

He looked up at her tone.

She drew a deep breath. “After everything that happened yesterday—I realized this morning that I’m not afraid anymore. Everything I went through in Saranac…doesn’t matter anymore. I’m no longer carrying around the feeling I have to be on guard all the time. I told Detective Hernandez about Ahmad’s concerns and fears. About my drive being stolen. Everything about the photos I dropped off for him at the station.

“He called me this morning and said they’d found my SSD drive on the boat. And he apologized to me. I could tell he regretted that he hadn’t looked at the photos or read my note. But it wasn’t all his fault. I was afraid. And I didn’t speak to him directly.” She turned her head to look at him. “I’m not going to allow fear to direct my life and how I live it anymore.”

“You’ve come a long way since we first met, Brynn.”

“Because I love you, Tucker. And sometimes, love gives you the courage to overcome things.”

Thank God! Tucker shoved himself out of the lounge and gripped her hands to pull her out of the hammock. He held her tightly against him. He kissed her softly, tenderly, then with all the pent-up passion and relief he felt. His voice was husky. “I love you too. I know it’s only been just over a month, but I’ve been trying to build up the courage to ask you to move in with me, Brynn. I’ve been going around the house, picturing how we can combine our lives.”

She kissed him softly, and he felt it to the bottom of his feet.

“I’m not saying no. But there’s no reason to rush. You know how I like to plan, and you do too. Right now, I have other things on my mind.”

Tucker laughed and caught her hand. They walked toward the house. He loved a challenge. She loved him. That’s what mattered. They’d figure things out. Together.

The End

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