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After flipping a few pages and scanning them, she said, “You’re right. I wouldn’t have believed this. Most people don’t do this type of work.”
He shrugged. “Like I said, I went to Cal Tech, and I was very good at what I did.”
“Did?” she asked incredulously. “It’s what you still do. It’s just that now you do it for yourself instead of the government.” An idea struck her. “The people you hire. Are they—?”
“Some of them,” he admitted.
“Like the biker?”
He laughed. “Like the biker. Hell, do you think I’d hire anyone who looked like that if I didn’t personally know him? He really was an operative, one mean son of a bitch.”
“They come to you for jobs when they retire?”
“No, nothing like that. I’m not a halfway house for burned-out government employees. I keep track of people, contact them to see if they’re interested in working for me. Most of them are very normal, and it’s just a matter of moving from one computer job to another.”
She closed the file and pushed it away from her. Quinlan eyed her with alarm. “Aren’t you going to read it?”
“No. I don’t need to know every detail of everything you’ve done. A brief overview is enough.”
He drew a deep breath and sat back. “Okay. That’s it, then. I’ve done all I can. I can’t convince you, prove it to you in any way, that I’ll never treat you the way Landers did. I know I won’t, but you’re the one who has to believe it. Elizabeth, sweetheart, will you marry me?”
She couldn’t help it. She knew it wasn’t the way a woman was supposed to respond to a marriage proposal, but the relentlessness of it was so typical of Tom Quinlan that she couldn’t stop the sharp crack of laughter from exploding into sound. She would probably hear that question every day until she either gave him the answer he wanted or went mad under the pressure. Instead of making her feel pressured, as it would have before, there was a certain amount of comfort in knowing she could depend on him to that extent. Seeing that file had meant more to her than he could know. It wasn’t just that it filled in the gaps of his life, but that he trusted her to know about him.
She managed to regain her composure and stared seriously at him. Somehow, what had happened during the blackout had lessened the grip that Eric Landers had still had on her, even after so many years. During the long hours of that hot night she had been forced to truly look at what had happened, to deal with it, and for the first time she’d realized that Eric had still held her captive. Because of him, she had been afraid to truly let herself live. She was still afraid, but all of a sudden she was more afraid of losing what she had. If it were possible to lose Quinlan, she thought, looking at him with wry fondness. But, yes, she could lose him, if she didn’t start appreciating the value of what he was offering her. It was sink or swim time.
He had begun to fidget under her silent regard. She inhaled deeply. “Marriage, huh? No l
iving together, seeing how it works?”
“Nope. Marriage. The love and honor vows. Until death.”
She scowled a little at him. He was as yielding as rock when he made up his mind about something. “Yours could come sooner than you think,” she muttered.
“That’s okay, if you’re the one who does me in. I have an idea of the method you’d use,” he replied, and a look of startlingly intense carnal hunger crossed his face. He shivered a little, then gathered himself and raised his right hand. “I swear I’ll be an absolute pussycat of a husband. A woman like you needs room.”
She had taken a sip of coffee, and at his words she swallowed wrong, choking on the liquid. She coughed and wheezed, then stared at him incredulously. “Then why haven’t you been giving me any?” she yelled.
“Because I was afraid to give you enough room to push me away,” he said. He gave her a little half smile that acknowledged his own vulnerability and held out his hand to her. “You scare me, too, babe. I’m scared to death you’ll decide you can get along without me.”
She crossed her arms and glared at him, refusing to take his outstretched hand. “If you think you’ll get a little slave, you’ll be disappointed. I won’t pick up after you, I don’t like cooking and I won’t tolerate dirty clothes strewn all over the place.”
A grin began to spread across his face as she talked, a look of almost blinding elation, but he only said mildly, “I’m fairly neat, for a man.”
“Not good enough. I heard that qualification.”
He sighed. “All right. We’ll write it into our wedding vows. I’ll keep my clothes picked up, wash the whiskers out of the sink and put the lid back down on the toilet. I’ll get up with the kids—”
“Kids?” she asked delicately.
He lifted his brows at her. She stifled a smile. God, dealing with him was exhilarating! “Okay,” she said, relenting. “Kids. But not more than two.”
“Two sounds about right. Deal?”
She pretended to consider, then said, “Deal,” and they solemnly shook hands.
Quinlan sighed with satisfaction, then hauled her into his arms, literally dragging her across the table and knocking her mug of coffee to the floor. Oblivious to the spreading brown puddle, he held her on his lap and kissed her until her knees were weak. When he lifted his head, a big grin creased his face and he said, “By the way, I always know how to bypass my own systems.”
She put her hand on his rough jaw and kissed him again. “I know,” she said smugly.
