Headed for Trouble - By Suzanne Brockmann Page 0,78
No doubt they’d held the gate for as long as they could. It was time to go.
Jules took out his phone and dialed it, but it was more than apparent now that not only had Jack’s phone given up the ghost, but that he wasn’t going to make it. Arlene was going to have to say her goodbyes to him via email.
She stood up, and Maggie threw herself into her arms and hugged her tightly. “Be careful of land mines and mortars and snipers and IEDs and truck drivers who are afraid of bees.”
Oh, God, now her daughter had yet one more thing to worry about. “I will,” Arlene promised. “You be careful of truck drivers who are afraid of bees, too, okay?”
Maggie nodded, getting the message that the accident could just as easily have happened here in Boston. “I love you, Mommy.”
“I love you, too, monkey-girl.”
“Hey! Hey! Arlene!”
They both looked up, and there he was, running toward them.
Jack.
And Maggie gave Arlene a push and it was all she needed to start running, too, toward Jack, and then, God, she was in his arms and he was kissing her.
His mouth was so warm, and he’d been drinking coffee, probably nonstop since he’d caught the plane from California, but he’d made it.
And she didn’t ever want to stop kissing him, but she had to go. And the tears that she always worked so valiantly to hide from Maggie escaped. “I’m so sorry,” she told him.
“I know,” he said as he turned her so that Maggie couldn’t see her, even as she dug through her pockets for a Kleenex. “I’m in love with you, remember? I’m in love with you, and if I had to answer the question What would Arlene do, I would say that of course you’d go back.”
She laughed as she wiped her eyes and blew her nose, as she looked at him, trying to memorize him—his smile, his warmth, the width of his shoulders, the unruly lock of hair that fell into his eyes—for the cold and lonely days and nights she knew were coming.
He was looking at her just as intently, but then he pulled her close and kissed her face, her nose, her cheeks, her mouth, her chin. “Vegas schmegas,” he said as he pulled Arlene over to where Maggie was standing near Jules and the woman from the airline. “Mags, can I borrow your lucky ring?”
Maggie clutched the diamond ring that Arlene had just given her, but Jack was pointing toward the kelly green plastic leprechaun that she’d gotten at Laser-Mania.
“I need to borrow it for a few months,” Jack added. “I hope that’s okay.”
Maggie nodded as she handed it to him.
But then Jack’s full attention was back on Arlene. And as she gazed up into the warmth of his whiskey-colored eyes, he whispered, “With this ring, I thee wed,” as he slipped it onto the ring finger of her left hand.
She laughed both from her surprise and from the power of the emotion that filled her.
“We don’t need to be in Vegas to start our lives together,” Jack told her. “We don’t even need to be together. You’re mine now, and Leenie, I’m all yours, and when you come back, we’ll go and sign whatever papers need to be signed and filed. But that won’t change the fact that it starts right now. You and me. Forever.”
As Jack kissed Arlene again she heard the attendant from the airline say to Jules, “I’m sorry, sir, the flight is full, otherwise I’d be more than willing to bend the rules.”
“How about you let me go on and see if there’s someone willing to take the next flight to JFK,” Jules suggested, and Arlene knew he was trying to arrange a seat for Jack to go with her, at least as far as New York.
But Jack heard him, too, and he stopped kissing Arlene to say, “No, that’s okay. Thank you, Jules, but it’s best if I stay here.”
With Maggie. He didn’t say those words, but he didn’t have to. Arlene knew that whatever happened—what was it that Mike Milton had said? That line from that movie? Come what may …
Come what may, God help her, Jack would be there for Maggie, forever, too.
That vow he’d made may not have been legal, but it was real.
“I’m so sorry, ma’am,” the woman from the airline said, and she really was sorry. She actually had tears in her eyes. This was probably the most up-close-and-personal she’d ever been to