Page 24

THE LODGE, MOUNT HOOD, TWO WEEKS LATER

It was a great party. The place was fantastic. It was a sunny day and the place was filled with light. Built of wood and glass the reception hall was huge, airy, magnificent. A cathedral to the art of living well.

And eating well.

There were whole stretches of time when the entire ASI crew—a rowdy bunch normally—fell completely silent as a new dish appeared on the fifty-foot-long table. Isabel had designed the menu and had done some of the cooking and it was spectacular. She’d absolutely refused to rest after near drowning and had been working round the clock on the menu.

Joe glanced over at her for the billionth time. So far there’d been ten toasts to her and she was rosy and smiling and so goddamned beautiful it nearly blinded him. She’d begun her blog again—just a few posts so far but the reaction was overwhelming. Each post now clocked up a hundred thousand hits and the numbers were climbing fast. She’d dusted off the file of the book on food she’d been writing. Joe let her be, didn’t push her in one direction or another, because she was finding her own way back just fine. But he was incredibly proud of her.

Her brother Jack was sitting on her other side. He’d cleaned up for the occasion after his months of staying under the radar, pretending to be a mentally disturbed homeless person. He and Nick had been huddled together for the past two days, planning the next steps.

The FBI had handled the removal of Hector Blake’s body back to Washington, DC, where soon the former senator would drown for the second time in a tragic accident in the Potomac. The Portland driver had been ID’d as a former member of the Clandestine Service who had quit after a fuckup in Pakistan.

Nick and Jack were patiently combing the records of former Clandestine Service members and they were being investigated for possible involvement in the Washington Massacre. They were both going back to DC tomorrow to ramp up the investigation, but they had given themselves today off. Amidst all the death, it was time to celebrate life.

There was a kid’s table and Isabel had prepared a perfect kid menu and they were gobbling food down like the apocalypse had come. Suzanne and Midnight’s amazingly gorgeous little girl sat at the head of the kids’ table, completely in charge. At four, she was a little princess.

The servers wheeled out a huge cake that was an exact replica of the ASI compound, down to the chocolate trees with mint leaves, the walls made of something Isabel called ganache. It looked amazing and doubtless tasted amazing, too. The servers were pouring champagne.

Pretty soon Midnight would stand up and make a speech and then the Senior would, too. His bosses. For real, this time. Though Joe’s leg was going to take another month to heal, he had absolutely insisted on coming in to work and he was starting to get a handle on their workload, on their clientele and had made a couple of suggestions that had been gratefully received. And as soon as he got the doctor’s okay, he was going operational.

So everything was going just dandy, except for one thing.

He and Isabel were together. She made that clear. But she never, ever spoke about a future together, which was what Joe wanted more than his next breath.

So he was approaching it as an op. Carefully calibrated, step-by-step. He had his strategy all planned out.

First step—unite the houses. Then their lives.

Joe leaned into Isabel and refrained from taking a big sniff, like a dog. God, she always smelled so damned good.

Be calm, he told himself. Relax.

This was worse than going on a mission downrange, because then it had been only his life in the balance. Here it was his heart.

“Hey, honey,” he said casually. “Look what Suzanne designed.” For us. He swallowed the words because, well, for Suzanne to design something for them, there first had to be a them .

He had his tablet with him and scrolled through the images. Suzanne was as magical with design as Isabel was with food.

She’d taken their two houses, united the gardens and built a glass walkway between the two. In the images the walkway was transparent but in actuality it would be made of one-way glass so that the long corridor got all the sunshine but nothing would be visible from the outside.

And it united their two houses into one, making for one big house with a huge garden that would be a great family home.

Isabel watched the carousel of images silently and Joe quietly began sweating. The corridor Suzanne had planned was full of hothouse plants and benches, with a living-room-like arrangement at one end, so light-filled it would be like taking coffee in a garden, even in winter.

Suzanne had called it an orangery, only he didn’t see any orange trees.

It was gorgeous, guaranteed to delight a chick. No? Isabel didn’t look delighted, she didn’t look anything.

Fuck.

Had Joe miscalculated? Presumed way too much? Was this a bad move? Shit, he thought he was being really clever, presenting united houses before proposing to unite their lives.

Maybe she didn’t want to unite their houses or their lives. Maybe she was just fine with the way things were. Maybe…maybe she was planning on moving on. Moving away from Portland.

God.

He watched her face carefully for some sign of what she was feeling, but couldn’t discern anything.

Finally the carousel of beautiful images stopped and Isabel looked up at him.

“Joe Harris!” Her voice rang out loud and clear. Everyone stopped talking and looked at them. Even the servers stopped and looked at them.

Oh fuck.

“Yes, honey?” He tried to smile.

Isabel tapped the glassy surface of the tablet. “Is this by any chance a proposal of marriage?”

Yes it was, but it was a subtle one. It was supposed to lead to a marriage proposal. Eventually. She’d seen right through it and he had no way to back down now. If she was going to refuse him it was going to be in front of everyone.

“Uh, yeah,” he croaked.

She looked severe. Disapproving. The ASI crew and Suzanne’s people watched, fascinated. Metal and Jacko were smiling sardonically.

Joe had made the mistake of putting on a dress shirt and a tie. He hated dress shirts and ties. Especially ties. They made him feel like a noose was around his neck. He loved it that ASI didn’t have a dress code. He ran a finger around his shirt collar to loosen it up a little so he could pull in some air.

Isabel frowned. “This is the most half-assed marriage proposal I have ever heard of. Do it right.”

Joe’s eyes widened. Do it right.

Okay .

Joe stood, using the table for balance. But there was no frigging way he could get down on his knee, not with that injured leg. He threw desperate glances at Jacko and Metal and they manned up. Both came around and each took an arm. They were holding almost his entire weight. That was okay. He wasn’t up to his full weight yet and even when he was, Jacko could bench-press him.

They lowered him to the floor so he could kneel on his good leg.

Ring. Jesus fucking Christ. Ring. Not in his wildest imagination had he thought he’d need a ring so soon.

The table had been set with pretty crystal napkin rings. He snatched his up and held it out to her on his sweaty palm. She picked it up, looked at it carefully, then put it on her left-hand ring finger. It was so large she couldn’t close her hand but she still held her hand out as if admiring an ordinary ring.

Isabel looked down at him and finally, finally smiled. “It’ll do. For now. Then you get me a proper one.”

Joe was breathing hard. “Is that a yes?”

She signaled Metal and Jacko and they hauled him back up.

“That is a definite yes,” she said and kissed him.

The whoops shook the rafters.