by Naomi Niles
I shook my head at her. “It seems everyone’s spoiling you.”
“I agree,” Vanessa said, putting her hands on her hips. “And to be frank, I resent the competition. I used to be your number one favorite aunt.”
“You still are,” Renni insisted.
Vanessa threw her a shrewd look. “And where are your other aunts on the list?”
She smiled. “They’re number one, too.”
“You’re a cheeky little girl,” Vanessa said as she grabbed Renni from Sam’s arms, threw her down on the bed, and started tickling her. As Renni screamed with laughter, Sam turned to me and pulled me into his arms.
“Are you ready for our romantic night?”
“All set,” I nodded. “I should go and say hi to Jessica and Alan first, though… I know it’s only been a month since the wedding, but I feel as though I haven’t spoken to them in ages.”
“You’ll see them tomorrow,” he said dismissively. “Tonight is our night.”
I smiled and nodded, allowing him to lead me to the door. We blew Renni kisses and then we were off to start our romantic night together. The atmosphere in Vegas was electric, or maybe it was just my mood. Either way, it was great to be out and about in a new dress with a handsome man on my arm. I noticed the appreciative looks Sam and I got, and it made me feel young and beautiful.
The restaurant we were heading towards resided in one of Vegas’ oldest and most beautiful hotels. And it was just a stone’s throw away from our own hotel. We walked hand in hand, enjoying the cool night air before we stepped into the beautiful lobby of the Charlton. It was a smaller hotel, but its interior was spectacular, and I had no doubts it’s restaurant would be, too.
“The restaurant we want is on the third floor,” Sam told me.
I followed him without question as he led me through the third floor. “Hold on,” I said, as I pulled Sam to a stop in front of a huge area of floor to ceiling glass windows. “Let’s take a moment to appreciate that view.”
The city was lit up like a gem. It was so bright and bursting with color that I had to avert my eyes after a moment. I found my gaze shifting to Sam’s perfect profile. He noticed me watching him after a moment and he smiled.
“Like what you see?” he teased.
“Always,” I nodded.
He turned to me and kissed me slowly, passionately. I felt my right leg flick up in an old world gesture of romance. “I didn’t expect to like Vegas this much,” I admitted, when we broke apart at last.
Sam smiled. “It’s not Vegas,” he said.
“It’s not?” I asked, with a raised eyebrow.
“Of course not,” he replied. “It’s us… It’s being with each other that makes the magic. I feel this way every single day I’m with you and Renni. We take the magic with us wherever we go.”
“Wow,” I smiled. “You could have been a poet.”
“I can take up poetry when I retire from fire fighting,” he laughed.
“I look forward to that day,” I said, joining in his laughter.
“Hey,” he said, his eyes falling on a point passed me.
“What?”
“A ballroom,” he said, taking me hand and pulled me along behind him.
“A ballroom?” I repeated. “What about it?”
Sam pushed open the huge brass doors and peeked in. “Wow… It’s amazing in there. Let’s sneak in.”
Before I could protest, he had pulled me through the doors and into the breathtaking ballroom. It was lit up as though in anticipation of some special event. Dainty arrangements of flowers lined the circular tilt of the room and the chandelier above us glittered with the strength of a million diamonds.
“Wow,” I said, staring up at the ceiling.
The ceiling was filled with paintings of angels, cherubs, and a number of other fantastical creatures. I was so caught up in the stories on the ceiling that I didn’t even notice the music start to play until Sam had pulled me into his arms for a dance.
“We’re dancing,” I said, looking at him in surprise.
“We’re dancing,” he nodded, twirling me underneath his arm. “This is practically a scene from Beauty and the Beast.”
I laughed at that. “Renni would love to see this,” I said. “She would have really appreciated the similarities.”
“Hmm…maybe we should go and get her then,” Sam suggested.
“I thought this night was just about us?”
“Since when has ‘us’ not included Renni? She is a part of us.”
I smiled. “I love how much you love her,” I said as we danced around the empty ballroom.
“I love her like she’s my own,” he said sincerely, and I saw the truth of that in her eyes.
“I know you do,” I said. “You can’t know how much that means to me.”
“I think I have an idea,” Sam replied.
Then he stopped abruptly and dropped his hands from my waist. I frowned, wondering what had happened. Then I saw him nod at someone behind me and I whirled around to see who he was looking at.
I stopped short when I saw Renni standing there, only a few feet from us. “Renni?”
The smile on her face was huge. She took a step forward and drew out a little box from the pocket of her dress. “Hi, Mommy,” she said. “I have something for you.”
I stared at the box in her hand. “Renni…what is that?”
Her answer was to open the box and reveal the small but beautiful diamond sitting in the center of a midnight blue cushion. I sucked in my breath and turned towards Sam. I stopped short when I realized he was on one knee, staring up at me with stars in his eyes.
“Sam…”
“Mia,” he whispered. “I’ve thought about a million ways to do this over the past few months. I knew I had to do it someplace special, with Renni at my side.”
Renni came to stand by Sam’s shoulder. He gave her a small wink, took the ring from her hands and then turned back to me. “Mia, you are the first woman I’ve ever loved ,and I want you to be the last. I want you to be my wife, and I want your daughter to be my daughter. Will you marry me?”
I could only stare at him for a moment, completely taken back, completely touched and completely overwhelmed by the unexpected moment.
“Say yes, Mommy,” Renni prompted, her little earnest voice cutting through my emotional thoughts.
And really, that was all the encouragement I needed. A tear slipped from my eye as I laughed. “Yes,” I said. “Of course, I’ll marry you.”
Renni gave a scream of delight as Sam rose to his feet and lifted me off mine. I felt Renni barrel into us, and I reached down to touch the silky softness of her hair. Just at that moment, the door to the ballroom opened and Sam’s family trooped in, screaming and cheering and yelling their congratulations.
“You planned this,” I breathed, looking into Sam’s hazel eyes.
“I did,” he nodded, smiling hugely.
He took my hand and we turned together to our bright new future.
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SEAL’D
By Naomi Niles
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places and incidents are products of the writer's imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2017 Naomi Niles
Chapter One
Zack
I was sitting in the airport waiting for my plane to arrive. Midmorning summer sunlight poured in through the huge windows. I wanted to curl up in my seat and sleep for the next hour, and I might have done it if the chairs weren’t so uncomfortable. I wasn’t looking forward to the flight back to our base in the Congo.
My buddy Carson Wallace was sitting next to me. Every few minutes, he’d reach over
and feel my pulse to make sure I was still alive. Carson’s funny like that. Only occasionally do I want to slap him.
“It’s been a good month, but I’m gonna miss being back in the States,” said Carson. He was a wiry young man of 25 who, like me, had a full head of closely shaved dark hair. Except where his eyes were black and thin and beady, like buttons, mine were blue and hungry. “I’m not looking forward to more physical training, I can tell you that much.”
I shifted in my seat, trying to find a position that wouldn’t kill my back. There were about twenty girls walking past us, probably all members of some church youth group. Some were wearing dresses; others were wearing tank tops and cute shorts.
I nudged Carson in the ribs with my elbow. “Take a good, long look,” I said in a voice no louder than a whisper as a girl in a tight purple shirt and pink shorts ran past us. “That’s the last you’re gonna see of them for a long time.”
“That’s the thing I always miss most about leaving home,” said Carson. “This time I decided to make the best of it while I was here. You wouldn’t believe some of the babes I shagged while I was in Brooklyn.”
“If you actually shagged a single babe,” I replied, “I’ll eat my left shoe.”
Carson went on for the better part of ten minutes making up stories while I drifted in and out of the conversation, nodding along every now and again to let him know I was listening.
The two of us were Navy SEALs, stationed together at a remote base in the heart of the Congo. For the last month I’d been on furlough, back home in Sulphur Springs, a one-horse town just outside of Dallas where my mom and dad lived on a two-acre ranch. While I was home, I’d gotten to visit with my three brothers and check up on how they were doing: one of ‘em was still living at home and playing video games, one was out on the streets causing trouble and about to end up in prison, and one of ‘em had just met a beautiful woman and started dating.
That brother, Curtis, had taken me out one night with his girlfriend and one of her friends on a double date. Me and the girl had hooked up and spent a few weeks together. As the end of my furlough got closer, I realized I would have to call things off. It about killed me to do it, but I knew there was no use trying to start a relationship with this woman when we were living halfway across the world from each other.
But man, there were nights when I missed the feel of her body beside me. I’d heard friends talk about missing somebody so much it was like a physical ache. I’d never felt that before until now. There were times when it made me wonder if maybe we shouldn’t get back together, but I knew it was unwise.
While my brothers had always been clueless and carefree, I had a reputation as being the worrywart. Back in high school during the summers when we used to sneak up onto the top of Bryant’s Bridge, they’d be whooping and yelling while I’d be wondering when the police were going to show up and whether we’d go to prison. As a SEAL, I’m trained to prepare for the worst, but really, I’ve been doing that for most of my life.
So even when me and the girl first started going out, I was already thinking ahead to the end of our relationship and how it was probably going to break her heart. In hindsight, I think I’d have enjoyed our time together a lot more if I hadn’t been so worried all the time. Sometimes during sex, she would pause for a minute because she could see the concern on my face. She’d lay her hand across the side of my head, like I had a fever or something. “What’s wrong, love?”
“Nothing,” I’d say. But we both knew it was untrue, and we would go to bed unhappy.
Curtis had threatened to take my phone away after I broke up with her because I kept wanting to text her and make sure she was okay. “I thought the whole point of you breaking it off,” he said, “is because you wanted to move on and forget about her. If you want her to get over you, you’ve gotta stop texting her.”
And that was all there was to it.
But that didn’t stop me from thinking about her. Wondering how she was doing. Sort of hoping she’d move on and find someone else and sort of hoping she wouldn’t.
And now that I was here, waiting in a New York City airport for my flight back to the Congo, it was like different worries were competing to see which ones would take up residence in my brain. We’ve all heard the horror stories about SEALs who got killed in their last month of deployment. I was more worried about what came after that. What was I going to do when I came back to the States? Had being in the SEALs prepared me in any real way for life at home?
I remembered Curtis being horribly depressed when college was ending and he didn’t know what he was going to do out in the real world. The Navy had been my college in that sense. There were nights when I seriously thought about beating down Sergeant Armstrong’s door and begging him to let me stay for another year or two. At least in the Congo I had a set routine, a set number of places to go each day, and I didn’t have to wonder what I was supposed to be doing because there was always someone to give me orders.
Here in the States, I had freedom. And I wasn’t sure freedom was what I wanted.
“What are we going to do with our lives, man?” I asked. It was that time of the morning after you’ve stayed up all night when delirium sets in and you feel the grief of the world. “We’ve only got a year left in our contracts, and frankly I don’t think I’m ready for my deployment to end. One month out of the year is enough for me.”
“Same,” said Carson. “I started to go crazy after just two weeks at home. There’s only so many things you can do in Austin before boredom sets in. Put me back out there in the jungle with a bottle of water and a gun, and I’m happy.”
“I guess I could write a book about my time in the service,” I said. “But that seems kind of sad, don’t it? Just reminiscing about the past.”
“Seems like a waste of time, honestly,” said Carson. “When you could be learning a new skill like, I don’t know, playing guitar in a metal band or training bears for the circus.”
“Oh, right, I forgot we were still in high school,” I said sarcastically, and went back to reading my book. It was a crime novel by James Patterson that I had picked up at one of the airport bookstores. Carson was always giving me hell for reading, so I did it around him as often as I could.
He leaned over, intending to nudge me in the ribs, but missed and struck my elbow. I winced. “Hey, you see that girl over there?” he asked.
“Which one?” I asked, feeling a little irritated. “There’s like two hundred girls here.”
“That one over there, in the stewardess uniform.”
Ignoring his bizarrely outdated choice of words, I reached into my backpack and pulled out my glasses. A girl in a red and black flight attendant’s uniform was walking past us at a brisk pace. Youthful and petite, with long dark hair and bangs neatly trimmed, she smiled at a couple of children on their way through the terminal. She looked like the sort of woman who smiled at everyone and meant it.
I’m not sure any of this registered with Carson, who only ever noticed two things when he looked at a woman. “Check out the boobs on that girl.” He let out a low moan of desire and satisfaction. “I bet she posts naked pics of herself on Reddit.”
“You ought to go ask her.” I was mostly kidding, but if it would get him to leave me alone… “You might as well get another one in before we leave. It’s gonna be a long time before you see another American girl.”
The cute flight attendant continued on her way through the concourse until she reached the counter where a man in uniform stood announcing departures. I went back to my book, hoping it would distract me from having to think about her and all the horrible things we could have done together if my plane wasn’t flying out in an hour. Carson groaned jealously, watching the two of them flirting. Then he went strangely quiet, and when I looked back over at him, he was on his phone, browsing through Reddit GoneWild.
I shot up in my seat. “Carson, what are you doing, man? You can’t be looking at that in here!”
“Why
not?” said Carson. “There’s no law.”
“I’m pretty sure there’s a law against looking at naked ladies in the middle of the airport terminal. Some woman in her forties with three kids will probably file a complaint with the airport police. They’ll come over here and give you a stern lecture.”
“Ooo, a lecture,” said Carson, waving his fingers in the air. “I’m real scared now.” But he put his phone away and went back to sitting there sulkily with his arms folded.
“You know, it wouldn’t kill you to learn to read,” I said quietly.
“Excuse me?”
“Nothing.”
I went on reading. But Carson was now so agitated and, presumably, horny that he began shaking his legs like a sulky child. Slumped over in his chair with his arms folded and a perturbed look on his face, he looked like he had just been sent to the principal’s office and was trying hard to pretend he was too cool to care.
“Look, man,” he said finally. “One of us needs to hit that, or I’m gonna be thinking about it for the rest of our flight.”
With a sigh of impatience I closed my book and set it down in my lap. “Okay.”
Carson sat up straight in his seat. “Okay?” he said, incredulous. “You’re really gonna go over there and talk to her?”
I shrugged, as if it was the most normal thing in the world. “Yeah, why not? If it’ll get you to shut up about it.”
“I really don’t think you understand how hot this girl is,” said Carson.
“No, I get it.” I grabbed my backpack from the floor and began unzipping it. “Cute girl, early twenties, looks a bit younger, curvy, not too skinny, real friendly attitude, got one of those million-dollar Yankee smiles that could light up a runway. Looks like Zooey Deschanel on a bad day. When you see a woman like that, you don’t ask questions. You just go for it.”
“So go for it!” shouted Carson, about to wet himself with impatience.
“It’s a little disturbing that you want me to do this so badly,” I said as I stood to my feet. “But just to show you how easy it is…”
I left the waiting area and strode up to the counter. Even from a distance of a hundred paces, I could feel Carson’s eyes on me.