“Hm,” Daniel said, intrigued, as he smacked a butler in the face with the man’s own umbrella. “A company also available to civilians? Offering combat training, information analysis, housekeeping advice?”
“Exactly.” Alice absent-mindedly punched a valet. She still couldnot quite look away from Daniel, so unruffled in his black suit, polished shoes—and with a silver ring in his ear. Her heart gave a hot little shiver at that.
“This service,” he said, straightening his cuffs, and the shiver became a veritable earthquake. “Would it have a base?”
“Perhaps it might be mobile?” Alice said, striving not to march over to him and rip off his cufflinks just so he had to arrange them again. “A townhouse or villa, equipped with a wheel and the latest in flight instrumentation. Something tidy, of course, with plenty of space for bookshelves. Behind you.”
Daniel rammed the butler’s umbrella backward. A valet who had been lunging at him gave a brief cry and collapsed. “It would need to have a catchy name,” he said. “For example, The Bixby Battle Consultancy.”
“Hm,” Alice mused. One of the bleeding men lying around her stirred, and she set her foot upon his chest. “We wouldn’t want it to be another Auntie: dull, conservative.”
“True,” Daniel said. “It should have a name that serves as a bond between concept and action.”
“And I’m not sure why it should have your name when we would own it in equal partnership.”
Daniel stepped toward her. (“Ow!” cried out one of the butlers, whose hand he trod on.) Angling his head to one side, he smiled rather shyly at her. “I was rather hoping the name might belong to us both.”
Stopping a few inches away, he stared at her—not one part of him touching her, and yet his energy pressing against every inch of her body. Alice stared back. Her fingers tapped her thigh and Daniel skipped a breath, as if she’d drummed them directly on his soul.
“Are you proposing I change my name by deed poll?” she asked.
His smile deepened. “Actually, I was proposing marriage. A real marriage, this time.”
“Oh!” She tried to compose a perfect response, but all her inner dictionaries had turned to flowers. “Well, that seems like a reasonable idea,” she managed to say. She held out her hand. “I accept.”
Daniel took her hand, but he did not shake it as she expected. Instead, he held it against his heart. “I love you, Alice,” he said.
“I love you more,” she answered.
The butlers and valets moaned.
Suddenly, O’Riley’s cottage door slammed open. “Are you two coming or not?” Alex called out testily.
“Be patient!” Cecilia admonished from the other side of the road, where she and Ned were leaning back against the boutique wall, arms crossed, watching the fight as if it were marvelous entertainment. “Let them have their romantic moment!”
“They’ll kiss soon and it will all be worth it,” Ned added, grinning. Cecilia smacked him.
“Kissing on the street in daylight is scandalous behavior,” Charlotte said.
“They just beat up more than a dozen men, darling,” Alex pointed out. “I think they’re beyond scandal now.”
Daniel lifted his eyes heavenward. “People,” he murmured disapprovingly.
“Friends,” Alice whispered.
The space between them grew warm and heavy with amazement, hope, love.
Or possibly with the shadow of the A.U.N.T. shed hovering lower. Suddenly, Agent M opened the flight window and leaned out. “Hello down there,” she shouted conversationally.
“Hello, Mia,” Alice called back, not looking away from Daniel.
“So are you going to surrender or not?” the agent asked.
“Not,” Daniel told her, keeping his gaze on Alice. “We’re going home.”
“I’ve got orders to take you dead or alive.”
“And—?” Daniel asked.
