“And you brought me back. I was floating above life, looking down on everything and you brought me back to earth, back to life.” She pressed her face to his chest, over his heart, and shivered, but she wasn’t cold at all. She was warm, and John loved her. He’d never stopped loving her. And, it seemed he never wanted to stop loving her. “You really want to marry me?” she said. “After six days, you really think you want to marry me?”
“Yeah. And you know I’m a victim of possessive, jealous son-of-a-bitchness due to bizarre circumstances brought on by stolen classified government information, don’t you? I’m not like that in normal life. I’m not like that—well I never was before now. Maybe it’s because you kept telling me I was a nice guy. Maureen told me I was too nice, which to her meant I was boring and had no sense of passion. And she was right. Maybe that was in the back of my mind. Maybe it’s because it’s taken me so long to find someone like you and I never knew what passion was, never knew it was missing from my life until you were standing on the side of the road.” He took a breath and it got stuck in his chest until he coughed. “So I dug in, “ he said. “I dug in deep, and there was no way I was going to share you, no way I was going to let go. I went a little nuts. I panicked. I was like a dog with separation anxiety. But that’s not me. I’m not like that.”
“You’re not?”
“Nope. Trust me. Being that way was as freaky for me as it was for you. I know this was an out-of-the-ordinary situation for both of us. Undercover work and keeping secrets can do that. “
“Can I trust you?” She peered up at him, surprised to see his face wet with tears.
“Can I trust you?”
She nodded. “Yes. Take a chance … take a chance on me.”
“Look who’s quoting ABBA now.”
With a half laugh-half sniffle, she made a face. “I did not quote ABBA.”
“You did too. So how’s a week from Tuesday for you? I get my stiches out then.”
“What makes you think I’d marry you?”
“Oh, I have no doubt you’ll succumb. You won’t be able to help yourself. I’ve piqued your curiosity.” John kissed her, slow and deep, and she looped her arms around his neck and pressed into him. He wanted to take her home, his home, and crawl beneath the covers with her. “Wasn’t I told to take you home to bed?” he said against her mouth, fingers in her purplish hair. “Let’s go home, go to sleep, and make really noisy love when we wake up next month. Unless you’d rather make love first and then go to sleep for a month.”
“Maybe I ought to go tell Dominic he’s not going to be a jailbird first.”
He pulled back slightly and wiped her wet face. “This is the last time he’s going to come before I do … and that came out sooo wrong. No, I swear to God, I’m not jealous, but why don’t you let me tell him? Lesley might want another swing at the world lightweight title, and I know a better way to knock the wind out of you. In fact, I have a whole box that will allow me to demonstrate as soon as we get home.”
“Not next month?”
In a half second his cell phone was in his hand. “Hell no. All the sex we’re going to have will commence as soon as I make this phone call and get you home and naked.”
“God, I love you,” she said.
He tapped his cell’s screen and kissed her cold nose. “I want to say, ‘Wow, that’s quite the coincidence,’ you know, because I love you too, but you don’t believe in coincidence.”
“Or happy endings. I don’t believe in those either.” She snuggled into him, arms beneath his jacket, around his waist.
“What’s wrong with happy endings?” He said, phone at his ear, waiting for the connection.
“We discussed the day we met. What do the words tell you? Happy ending, meaning it ends, it’s limited, it’s finite. Now, happily ever after … well, that’s a different story.”
The cell began to ring on the other end. “Yeah, because it’s our story.”
“You had to get cute, didn’t you?”
“You can’t deny this has been quite the romantic comedy.”
“Is this where the music swells and we fade to black?”
“No, Queenie, it’s where we walk into the sunset and our bright future together.”
“Do you not see that it’s night time, there’s no sun, and it’s snowing?”
He set his chin on the top of her snowflake-sprinkled head. “All right. We walk into the orange glow of moonlit snow, and you know what we got going on here, don’t you?”
“You’re going to say witty banter, aren’t you?”
Sniff-sniff-sniff. “Hey, Mighty Colossus!” he said into the phone. “Why are you whispering? … Oh, the library? Sorry. Well, I’ll be quick. Queenie wanted to let you know she saved your ass and you’re not going to prison for being a spy, whatever the hell that’s supposed to mean. … Dude, you’re at the library, don’t shout! Anyhow, maybe she missed yours, but you’re going to miss hers. Or mine. Queenie and I are getting married a week from Tuesday. I know I can count on you to be there.”
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ISBN: 978-0-85799-072-3
Title: For Your Eyes Only
Copyright © 2013 by Sandra Antonelli
All rights reserved. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher, Harlequin Enterprises (Australia) Limited, Locked Bag 7002, Chatswood D.C. NSW, Australia, 2067.
All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.
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