Stay with Me: A Happily Ever After Book (Book 2)

by Amy Brent

  The tall SEAL, Charlie, looked over his shoulder at the six marines and said, “Maybe he's right, fellas. Six on four? Maybe a couple of us should sit this one out and give them a fighting chance.”

  The marines made condescending sounds and laughed. “Maybe you should shut your mouth before you say something that makes me forget my manners,” one said. He made a fist and slammed it into the palm of his other hand.

  I slammed my hand down on the bar. “That is enough!” I shouted. “All of you, out, now. You're all done here.”

  There were various protests, with both sides blaming the other. Fingers were pointed, names were called, and curses were hurled across the room.

  I wasn't sure who swung the first punch, but before I knew it, the entire group of them was engaged in a giant rumble. I grabbed my phone and called the police, ducking behind the bar as fists started flying. One of the men broke a glass pitcher over another's head. Two men started grappling and they fell back onto one of the tables. It collapsed under their weight and shattered into a thousand pieces. Another man was slammed back into the wall, knocking down several pictures and a neon sign, which broke and sent up sparks.

  The gentleman started pulling his men back as quickly as he could, forcing them to withdraw from the brawl. A couple of the marines tried to rush him, but he held up his hands towards them, palms out. “I think we all proved we've had too much to drink tonight,” he said, staring both of the marines down. “How about we call this one a draw and stop before someone gets seriously hurt.”

  The marines grumbled to themselves, but they backed down. A few moments later, the police arrived. All of the men, marines and SEALs together, were marched outside. The police checked to make sure no one else in the bar was hurt, then they started taking witness statements. All of the stories varied, with no one quite sure which group had started the whole fiasco. I was just grateful to have the men out of here before things had gotten any worse.

  A squad of MPs from the base showed up to take custody of the men. I knew they'd all get a slap on the wrist, and maybe be stuck with latrine duty for a few weeks to teach them a lesson, but that would be it.

  By the time the police, the MPs, and the drunken louts had all left, all of my regular customers had gone as well. I was left with an empty bar and a bunch of smashed furniture. I sighed and grabbed a broom, then started cleaning up the mess.

  The worst part about the whole thing, aside from the damages to the bar, was that since both groups had been hauled off, none of them had been able to leave me a tip.

  The next day, I opened the bar early. There were at least a few hundred dollars worth of damages from the fight, and I had to bring in some extra business to make up for the cost. A couple of my regulars wandered in the door not long after I turned on the neon OPEN sign, though they weren't some of my best tippers.

  I went through my day feeling the weight of last night on my shoulders. Watching the marines and the SEALs brawl had shaken me. Don't get me wrong, I'm no wilting flower. I've tossed a drunk or three out on the curb when I had to, and being a big girl gave me a lot more upper body strength than most people gave me credit for. But that was different than trying to break up an all-out brawl among trained soldiers. These had been men who were trained to kill, and there had been no way I was putting myself in between them.

  I was still considering what to do about the whole situation when one of the navy SEALs walked in the front door. It was the gentlemanly one, the one who'd called me “ma'am.” The only reason I didn't tell him to turn around and leave the moment I saw him was because he'd been the one working to break up the fight.

  “I hope you left your friends back at the base,” I said as he approached the bar. “I'm not looking for any more trouble here tonight.”

  “No trouble, ma'am,” he said. “My boys are going to spend the next few weeks regretting what they did here, after the way our superiors dragged them over the coals. I can assure you, they were not behaving the way the navy expects of its men.”

  “Well, good,” I said, somewhat mollified. “Just as long as they learn their lesson and don't do this sort of thing again.”

  “I'd also like to pay for the damages,” he said, reaching into his pocket. “I feel responsible, and I'd like to make it up to you.”

  “You don't have to do that,” I said, though in truth I very much wanted to be reimbursed. “I've got insurance...”

  “Please, ma'am. I insist.” He handed me a folded check. “And again, I apologize. You have yourself a nice day.”

  “I...” Before I could say anything else, he turned and walked out the door. “Well, thank you.”

  I shook my head and unfolded the check. Then my eyes just about fell out of my head.

  He'd written out the check for the amount of $10,000.

  I growled under my breath and stepped out from behind the bar, hurrying to try to catch up with him. I pushed the door open and stepped outside into the fading daylight. “Hey, what the hell is this? Some kind of a joke?”

  I looked around, but all I saw was a military Humvee, already driving off. If the man heard me, he gave no sign of it.

  I was left standing there, holding the check, wondering what I was supposed to do with it. I didn't believe for one minute that it would be any good. Though if it was some kind of prank, I figured I could at least try to deposit it. If it overdrew the man's checking account, that would be just the kind of punishment he deserved for messing with me.

  I sighed and shoved the check into my pocket, then headed back inside. I had had about all I could handle of military men, though at least this time I'd managed to avoid having anything broken.

  I waited until the end of the week, when I was depositing the bar's receipts for the week, to take the check down to the bank. The teller did a double-take when she saw it, but she didn't say anything about it. I almost told her that I thought it was a prank, but I decided to keep my mouth shut and see what happened.

  Over the next few days, I mostly forgot all about it. It was business as usual, and the weekend was always a busy time for me. I made sure to tell my other bartenders and waitresses about the fight, and warned them that they should call the police if anything like that happened again. We got a few men from the base who came in Friday and Saturday night, but I didn't recognize any faces from the night of the brawl, and none of the military men caused any problems.

  I'd practically forgotten about the whole thing until days later, when I was going over my bookkeeping for the end of the month. I booted up the computer in my office and started going over all of the daily sales reports from the bar, tallying my deposits and deducting the various expenses that had to be paid: the lease on the building, the liquor license, the beer costs, the electric bill, and so on. It wasn't until I saw the bar's account balance that I realized something was off.

  There was actually $10,000 more in the account than the ledgers showed. The mystery man's check had cleared. I hadn't even bothered to record it in my books, but there it was.

  “Well, I'll be.”

  I sat there, staring at the monitor, unable to form a coherent thought. $10,000 was a lot of money. I could take a vacation. Pay off what was left on my car. Fix the walk-in freezer in the back so that it would stop icing over. I could do just about anything.

  But more than the thought of what I'd do with the money, my mind focused on the mystery of the navy SEAL. How had he come by that kind of money? I didn't really know much about military pay grades, but I was pretty sure they didn't pay enough to cover something like this.

  The question bothered me for days and days. I kept wondering who this man was, and how he had come by that kind of money. I wondered if he was up to some kind of illegal smuggling operation. It didn't seem to fit his character, but I couldn't think of another explanation. Super rich men didn't just up and join the navy. Did they?

  I finally got to the point that I just couldn't stand not knowing. One afternoon while I was getting ready to open th
e bar, I set aside my work and sat at the computer to look up a phone number for the base. I found a contact number for concerns from the general public, dialed it, and waited until a gruff-sounding man answered the phone.

  After he introduced himself, I said, “Hi, umm, this is going to sound kind of strange.”

  I heard him sigh into the phone. “Yes?”

  “Well, see, it's about one of the men from your base.”

  “Can you give me his name?” he asked. I heard noises over the phone, as if he were rustling through a desk for a pen.

  “Well, I don't know his name exactly.”

  “What is this regarding?” he asked.

  “Well...” I bit my lip, trying to figure out how to explain it without sounding like a nutcase. “See, there was a fight at my bar the other day...”

  “Ahh. Yes, ma'am. I can assure you, the men involved in that incident have already been disciplined.”

  “No, you see...” I sighed, rubbing at my eyes. “One of the men came back, to pay for the damages? And, well, he wrote me a check.”

  “All right,” the man said. His tone was growing impatient.

  “And, well, it was for $10,000.”

  There was silence on the other end of the line.

  “Hello?”

  “Yes, ma'am,” the man said. “That would be Rick Donaldson.”

  My eyes widened. I was surprised the man on the phone would know who I was looking for, just like that. “He...he's one of your men, then?”

  “Yes, ma'am. Navy SEAL, Chief Petty Officer. We call him Richy Rick.”

  “You mean Richy Rich?” I asked.

  “No, ma'am. Close. The boys got the name from the old cartoon.”

  I leaned back in my chair, trying to get my head around this. “So...he's in the navy, and he's rich.”

  “That's right, ma'am. Listen, if Rick wanted to pay you back for those damages, I suggest you just take the money and be grateful. He does this sort of thing.”

  “But...”

  “I'm sorry ma'am, but I really have other business to attend to. Have a nice day.”

  He hung up the phone, leaving me with more questions than I'd had before. Though my mystery man at least had a name.

  Rick Donaldson. I decided to Google him and see what else I could learn.

  What I found out about him just blew my mind even more.

  Over the next few weeks, I couldn't get the story of Rick Donaldson out of my mind. I read dozens of news articles, trying to figure him out. The perspectives on his story changed depending on who was writing the article, but certain facts and details stood out the same across all of them.

  Rick was the only son of a rather wealthy industrialist. By all rights, he should have been a businessman himself, preparing to run the family business so he could take over as President and CEO when his father eventually retired. Instead, he'd run away from home and joined the navy. There were several interviews with him where reporters asked what prompted him to leave behind his family and his wealth in order to serve his country. His answers varied, but he always said something about how he wanted to do something more with his life, something that would have a greater impact. It seemed that he'd caught a case of patriotism, and considered it more important than his heritage.

  He was also known for using his money to help people in countries all around the world. When the U.S. military invaded Afghanistan, Rick had sent millions in relief funds to help the refugees in that country. When there was a terrorist attack at a U.S embassy, Rick sent money to the widows and families of the deceased to help support them in their time of need. He'd made the news dozens of times over the last ten years for his charitable donations, and whenever he was asked about it, he said it was simply his civic duty.

  For a while I kept hoping that he would stop by the bar again, but as the weeks passed, he never did. I figured he probably felt guilty for what had happened the last time he was here. But he remained in my thoughts, and I had the feeling that we would run into each other again, sooner or later.

  It was almost two months after the bar fight before Rick and I crossed paths again. A really bad storm passed over the east coast, tearing up trees, flooding the streets, and causing damage to hundreds of homes. Our neighborhood didn't get hit as hard as some did, though there was some flood damage to the bar and we were without power for two days.

  I was out the day after the storm with a bunch of the other local business owners on my block. We all tried to help each other out in times of need, from the time a fire gutted several businesses in the strip mall down the street, to the time construction on the main road ruined business for all of us, since so much traffic had been diverted away from our area by the detours. We'd all worked together to make sure that no one went out of business, and after the storm we did the same, working as a team to clear away debris, board up windows, and cut down trees that had toppled during the storm.

  The local coffee shop owners brought out thermoses of free coffee to keep all of us warm and refreshed as we worked, and the baker's shop down the corner brought everyone donuts. I was taking a coffee break, leaning against the back of a truck, when I spotted him. Rick and a group of men, presumably all from the navy base, were just up the road from me, hard at work. He was wearing a pair of thick work gloves and heavy black boots. He trudged through the puddles at the edge of the road, working to clear some large branches that were blocking the street. He and his men worked efficiently, no doubt due to the training they'd had in working as a team.

  Looking for an excuse to go over and talk to him, I went to refill my coffee, and got several extra cups. I balanced them carefully, something I had a lot of experience with, being a bartender, and walked over to Rick and his men.

  “Well,” I said, looking the SEALs over. “If it isn't Richy Rick.”

  Several of the other men laughed. No doubt they were well aware of Rick's nickname. Rick smiled bashfully at me and said, “So, you've heard about that.”

  “Wasn't exactly hard,” I said. I stepped closer and held out two of the paper coffee cups, one stacked on top of the other's plastic lid. “I thought you boys might like a warm drink.”

  “Thank you, ma'am,” Rick said, taking the coffee. He handed the cups to his men, then helped relieve me of the others I was carrying.

  “It's Chantelle,” I said. “I didn't expect to see you navy boys out here helping out. I didn't think this was part of your duties.”

  “Not our official duty,” Rick said. He sipped at his coffee. “We're off-duty. Just lending a hand.”

  “Awfully kind of you.” I took a sip of my coffee, looking him up and down. He didn't look rich. Didn't look like anything but a navy boy. I would have expected to see him in an Italian suit, wearing a gold watch and being driven around by a chauffeur. Not getting himself muddy hauling debris out of the streets.

  There was a long silence as we stood there with our coffee. I had trouble making eye contact. He couldn't have known how much I'd been looking up about him over the last few weeks. I wondered if he would find it flattering, or creepy. I decided to avoid mentioning it.

  “Thank you,” I said. “For the check, I mean. It helped out a lot. Might still need some of it to help pay for storm damage repairs.”

  “I was happy to help out,” he said.

  “You obviously aren't hurting for money.”

  He smirked, glancing at me out of the corner of his eye. He didn't say anything. Didn't have to. He held himself with a quiet confidence. He didn't seem to need to show off his wealth. He looked almost embarrassed to have it brought up.

  “So how's your business going?” he asked me. “I hope the storm didn't hurt you too bad.”

  “Nothing major.” I shrugged. “Insurance should cover most of it. Everything's been fine otherwise.”

  “If there's anything I can do to help,” he offered.

  I studied him for a moment. Part of me, the prideful part, didn't want to take any more help from him. The more practi
cal part wanted me to milk him for whatever I could get out of him. If he was willing to throw his money around, there was no reason I couldn't take advantage of that.

  But I felt guilty at the idea of taking advantage. So instead I said, “The mom and pop grocer's on the corner, they got hit the hardest. I don't think they've got enough insurance to cover it. If you could do anything...”

  He looked down the street at the grocer's. A huge tree had smashed in their roof, and once the roof had collapsed, the store had been flooded. The building was in horrible shape, and they'd lost a lot of their inventory when the grocery shelves were flooded, ruining most of the food.

  Rick nodded. “I'll see what I can do.”

  “Thank you.”

  He smiled at me, and for a moment, I thought there was something in that smile. I caught his eye roaming when he thought I wasn't looking. I was a big girl, but I still had curves in all the right places, and I saw him eyeing my curves with an appreciative gleam in his eyes. My face started to grow warm and I hid my blush behind my coffee cup.

  He finished his coffee and walked over to the wastebasket on the corner to toss it in. “Thanks for the coffee,” he said. “We should do this again sometime.”

  “Cleaning up after a storm?”

  He chuckled and shook his head. “Coffee. If you're free, that is.”

  I eyed him appraisingly. “I'm sure I could squeeze in some time,” I said. “As long as you're buying.”

  He smirked and nodded. “Of course.”

  “Stop by the bar sometime,” I said.

  “Actually,” he said, “I was hoping for something a bit more...private.”

  I arched an eyebrow, studying the look on his face. I couldn't tell if he was serious or not, but everything about him so far had seemed sincere. “All right. Give me a call sometime.”

  I gave him my phone number and he programmed it into his phone, promising to call. Then he headed back to his men, who started hooting at him and teasing him for being a flirt.