THE PARADISE SNARE(92)

Han smiled at the big alien. “And see Bria only once a year? I’m afraid that’s not the way we humans do things, pal. But thanks for the invite, Muuurgh. Maybe I’ll come back and see how you and Mrrov are doing someday.”

“Han do that, and soon,” Muuurgh said, his Basic disintegrating in the face of strong emotion. He grabbed the Corellian in a hug, scooping him clean off the ground. Han hugged him back.

Bria and Mrrov also exchanged a fond farewell. “You will conquer your need for the Exultation,” Mrrov told Bria, earnestly. “I did. For a long while after I made myself resist it, I grieved for it. But after many days, the longing eased, and now I never feel it. I let my anger against those slavers help me wipe the longing from my spirit.”

“I hope I can be as strong as you, Mrrov,” Bria said.

“You already are,” the Togorian female assured her. “You just don’t realize it yet.”

Once aboard the Talisman, Han lifted the Ylesian yacht into the clear skies of Togoria with a genuine feeling of regret. “This is a good world,” he said to Bria, who was sitting beside him in the copilot’s seat. “Good people, too.”

“Yes,” she agreed. “It was certainly good to us. I’ll never forget yesterday, if I live to be a hundred.”

Han smiled at her. “Me neither, sweetheart. All my life I wanted to go to the beach and just be able to act like a regular citizen—no scams, no security forces to worry about, no contraband burning a hole in my pocket.

Thanks to you, I know what that’s like, now.”

She gave him such a tender smile that he leaned over and kissed her.

“Bria … I …” Han hesitated, took a deep breath, and then shook his head.

Squaring his shoulders, he turned back to his controls and grew very busy with his piloting. Bria sat there watching him, never taking her eyes off him as he calculated their jump to hyperspace, and fed the coordinates he’d chosen into the navicomputer.

When the stars streaked by them, and they had safely made the jump, she swiveled her seat toward his and put a hand on his arm. “Yes?” she said.

“Go on. You were saying?”

Han tried to look innocent, and failed. “Huh? What do you mean?”

“You were about to tell me something, when you got busy piloting.

Well, we’re safely in hyperspace now, so there’s no reason you can’t tell me.” She smiled slightly. “I’m waiting.”

“Well, I was just thinking … that I’m hungry,” he finished in a rush.

“Really hungry. Let’s go get some lunch.”

“We ate before we left, barely an hour ago,” she reminded him. Her expression gentle, she reached out and captured one of his hands and held it in both her own. “Tell me,” she said.

“Well …” He shrugged. “I’m telling you I’m hungry again.” “Are you?” she asked quietly.

“I …” He shook his head, obviously ill at ease. “Uh, no. Hey .

. .

Bria, honey … I’m no good at this.”

“You’re good at some things,” she said, smiling impishly.

“Like what?” he challenged, grinning back.

“Like … piloting. And fighting. And rescuing people.”

“Yeah, I guess I am.” He looked at her again, and all the sudden rush of bravado faded. “Bria … what I was trying to say was that I .

. .” He cleared his throat. “This is not easy.”

“I know,” she said. “I know.”

Raising his hand to her lips, she kissed it, then said, “Han… I love you, too.”

He looked both pleased and surprised. “You do?”

“Yes. For a long time, now. I think I fell in love with you that day in the refectory, when you wouldn’t go away, no matter how much I told you to.”

“Really? I didn’t know until … I don’t know when I knew. But when I figured it out … it scared me, Bria. Never happened to me before.”

“Loving someone? Or being loved?”

“Both. Except for Dewlanna. She loved me, I guess. But that was different.”

“Yes.” Her eyes were shining. “This is different. I just hope we can be together, Han.”

Now it was his turn to take her hands in his. “Of course we’ll be together,” he said. “I won’t let anything get in the way of that.

Count on it, sweetheart.”

Han set a course for the Talisman that took them far away from Hutt space and brought them in a leisurely three-day trip to the Corellian system. He was deliberately prolonging his and Bria’s time alone together. Inwardly, he was dreading having to go back to Corellia and meet her family. He knew almost nothing about how “citizens” lived, and he was pretty sure he would have trouble fitting in.