Headed for Trouble - By Suzanne Brockmann Page 0,66

weren’t dating her for her massive vocabulary. So don’t play the our-love-transcends-time-and-space card, okay? It doesn’t fly.”

“I’m only human,” Jack admitted. “I made a lot of mistakes. I won’t deny that. Hell, I still make mistakes.”

“And it doesn’t occur to you that this could be one of them?” she asked. It was her turn to lean forward. “You don’t need to marry me to sleep with me, Jack. I’m sitting right here. You don’t need to ply me with any bullshit, or even another glass of wine. I’m good to go. A sure thing.”

“It’s not bullshit,” he argued. “I was young. And stupid. God, Leenie, remember that weekend that we played that epic Monopoly game?”

Arlene did remember. It was post–Kim Bickford, and Jack and Will alone had come to visit for the weekend.

After the infamous full-family Monopoly match, she’d been unable to sleep, and she’d gone into the kitchen for a snack and found Jack sitting at the island counter, reading a battered economics textbook for a required course that was, as he’d said, “kicking the crap” out of him. They’d started talking. And talking. And were both still awake as the dawn lit the sky.

It was the first of about a dozen similar Saturday nights, before he’d started dating a girl named Shannon West. At which point he completely dropped off the map.

“I was terrified of you,” Jack confessed now. “Scared shitless by the way you made me feel. I was afraid of losing, I don’t know, my freedom, my youth, which is … God, I say it and it sounds so stupid now. But it’s true. If I could go back in time, I would’ve just kept coming over, every single weekend until … Ding! You turned eighteen.”

Arlene laughed at that. “Just because I’m a sure thing now doesn’t mean I was one back then.”

“You were in love with me, too,” he said quietly, and she was unable to deny it. “All I had to do was wait. But I got scared. And impatient—I’m not going to deny that, either. But I blew it. I know it. And I have regretted it every single day of my life. A day doesn’t pass, Arlene, that I don’t think about you.”

And there they sat. Just looking at each other.

“If we hadn’t messed it up, I wouldn’t have Maggie,” she finally whispered.

“And I wouldn’t have Luke and Joe,” Jack agreed. “So maybe everything happens for a reason—including my meeting Maggie when I did, at Robin Chadwick’s wedding.” He smiled then, just a little. “Who would’ve thought I’d be invited to a gay movie star’s wedding? But I was, because of Will, and … Here we are. Older. Wiser. But … I’m still that kid, Leen—the boy who shared secrets with you in your parents’ kitchen. And that girl who stayed up all night to talk to me is still inside of you, I know she is. Only this time around, I’m brave enough to tell you how I feel, that I want you in my life, that I love you. It’s always been you. Always.”

Oh, God. “But then what?” she asked. “If we go to Las Vegas—God, I can’t believe I actually said those words. You know, in the Army, you’re supposed to ask permission to get married. There are forms to fill out—”

“I am very good at filling out forms.”

“Jack—”

“I’m not asking you to break any rules,” he said. “Do you seriously think, with your record, that if you ask to get married, you’d be denied—”

She interrupted him. “Regardless of that, regardless of … anything. Jack, I need to go back. I have to go back.”

“I get it,” he said. “You’ll go back. I’m not asking you to not go back. I know what it means and … I’m asking you to … be with me. Be faithful and, I don’t know, email me. And I’ll email you, every day. Every hour if you want. Until eventually the Army’s done with you—it’s going to happen, and then you’ll come home.”

“And we’ll move to California,” Arlene pointed out.

Jack shook his head. “Only if you want to.”

“How am I going to say no to that, knowing if I do, you won’t see your kids?”

“I’ll see my kids. I’ll find another job,” he said, “with better pay.”

“You’ll give up writing?” she asked, aghast. “That’s not—”

“I’m not going to give up writing,” he spoke over her. “I’m a writer. I’ll always write. But if I have to—” he shrugged “—I’ll get a second job