Chapter 5 - The Toast Nobody Planned
Dinner was well underway, string lights glowing along the terrace, champagne being refilled at a pace that suggested the staff had correctly read the room's mood, when Grant tapped his glass and rose for the best man's toast — except it wasn't the best man who stood.
It was Robert Ellison.
"I know this isn't traditionally the father-in-law's moment," he said, drawing a ripple of soft laughter, "but I've officiated a few things in my time, and I'd like to say something, if the room will indulge me."
He glanced at Rebecca, seated near the head table now, an unspoken invitation she hadn't asked for and didn't know what to do with.
"When my son told me he was marrying into the Hale family, I'll admit I expected exactly what I'd been told to expect. A lovely bride, a proud father, the usual." A few polite chuckles. "What I did not expect was to spend cocktail hour in a room with nearly three hundred of the finest operators this country has produced, all of whom stood at attention the second Commander Hale walked through that door."
Silence again, but a different kind — anticipation instead of shock.
"I served, a long time ago, in a different uniform, in a different war," Robert continued. "And I can tell you, men like that don't stand for just anyone. They stood today because Rebecca Hale has spent the last several years making sure some of them came home to their own families. Today, she came home to hers — and I understand she was asked to hide that."
He let that sit, and Rebecca felt her father's stillness beside her turn into something closer to stone.
"I don't know all the details of this family," Robert said, "and it's not my place to. But I know what it means when nearly three hundred men rise without being asked. It means somebody in this room has spent their career doing the kind of work the rest of us only get to sleep safely because of. I'd like to raise a glass — not just to Madison and Grant, though God knows I'm thrilled for them — but to Commander Rebecca Hale, who I hope understands that in this family, at least, her career is very much given a damn about."
Glasses rose across the room. The SEALs at the back stood again, this time not for protocol, but because it felt right.
Rebecca sat very still, throat tight, unused to being the subject of anyone's toast, let alone a room full of strangers who'd decided, on her behalf, that she deserved one.
Beside her, her father set down his glass without drinking from it and, for the first time that day, looked directly at her.
"Rebecca," he said, low enough that it stayed between them. "Can we talk? After this?"
May you like
"We can talk," she said. "But I'm not changing out of this uniform for the rest of the night."
Something that might have been the beginning of a real smile crossed his face — tired, uncertain, but real. "I wasn't going to ask you to."
