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Jack motioned for me to sit on the pillows near the tent, but he remained standing, and although the room was only lit by stars, I caught the nervous look crossing his face. “Back at that reality show,” he began, his tone trembling a touch, “I was asked what I wanted more than anything, and . . .”
“To be a husband and father,” I blurted at the memory, falling back onto my heels as my heart raced. Wife and mother were on my wish list. Are you . . .?
Jack let go of the paper and it sailed to the floor as he reached into his pocket and took a knee in front of me. He produced a small box, and a gasp escaped my lips as tears began sliding down my cheeks when he opened it. “My dad gave me Mom’s ring when she passed, but I never gave it to . . .” He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “Will you be the mother of my children, Charlotte?” His lids parted. “I mean, marry me first. Marriage and then children. In that order. Well, probably that order.” He cursed under his breath. “I’m messing this up.”
I reached for his wrist and pushed up on my knees, cupping his face with my other hand. “This is perfect.” I nodded, tears slipping down both our cheeks now. “Yes, I’d love for you to be the one to make those wishes of mine come true. I’d love to be your wife. To be the mother of your children,” I choked out.
“You will?” His glossy eyes held mine, and I leaned in and kissed him.
“Yes,” I said, a bit breathlessly. He removed the ring from the box and slid the solitaire diamond on my finger. “Charlotte London. Sounds incredible to me.”
“Your name will be kind of a book title now. A Tale of Two Cities. My mom would love that,” he said with a grin, then let go of the box and pulled me against him for a hug. “Damn, I love you so much.”
“I love you, too.” I couldn’t help but remember Camila’s words to me at the party last weekend. She was right again. My future did look pretty bright. I hadn’t expected it to happen so soon, but it was . . . exactly how it was meant to be. “So, mister, what is this third and final wish you spoke of tonight?”
“Mmm.” He let go of me. “I’d rather show than tell you.” He grabbed his shirt from the back of his head and removed it. “What do you say?”
I teased my brows up and down, and thought back to my list, realizing he was about to grant me the make love beneath the stars one. “I do love a good game of show-and-tell,” I said before he flipped me, and I released a little squeal of excitement as he settled his forearms on each side of me.
He murmured in my ear, “Tell me what you want me to do to you, sweetheart.”
I swallowed and held the back of his neck and arched into my future husband and whispered, “Ohhh, I think I’d rather show you.”
EPILOGUE
JACK
UNDISCLOSED LOCATION - A MONTH LATER
“You guys weren’t kidding about him being Batman. You really have a lair,” Charley commented as we left the tunnel to enter my team’s “bunker” hidden by waterfalls in the mountains of Pennsylvania. She’d had “work a mission with Jack” on her to-do list, and who was I not to oblige my fiance´e’s wishes?
“Batman?” Carter scoffed, then whistled for his dog, Dallas, to hurry along since he’d become distracted by a . . . well, bat, on the way there.
Carter knelt before Dallas and scratched him behind his ears. The man showed more emotion to Dallas than any of us on the team. But then I remembered that conversation I’d eavesdropped on between him and Gwen back in Ecuador. The man did, in fact, have emotions. Apparently, he just didn’t know how to express them.
“We’ll find the cleaner, don’t worry,” Gwen piped up, plopping down behind Carter’s desk to work, not wasting any time. “At least we got close enough back at the hotel to hack his computer.”
Jesse walked up behind her, watching her flick on all the screens to work.
Charley sat on the couch near the desk and drew one knee to her chest, eyes still moving around the place, taking it all in.
I dropped down next to her and hooked my arm behind her back, still in shock she was with us, that I’d given in and let her join a mission—with Carter and Gray’s permission—now that I’d been cleared to operate again post-shoulder injury.
“So, this cleaner guy you’re chasing cleans up crimes? That’s why he’s called that?” Charley asked.
Charley didn’t know every detail surrounding our op, mostly because I didn’t want her too embedded in the mission. I still needed to keep her safe.
“Yeah, and we’re honestly more focused on going after his clients who hired him, but still, we’d like to take him in as well,” Gray spoke up before I could. “And now that we have his list, well, once Gwen decrypts it, we’ll be able to move forward.”
When a silent alarm in the cleaner’s room at the hotel had been tripped, our mark had escaped, and we’d failed to finish part two of our mission in taking him in. It’d been our bad luck the hotel had been jam-packed with people attending conventions, which made it harder to track him. But we’d also picked up a tail in the way of security, and Charley, acting as our getaway driver, was the reason Jesse and I had made a clean escape.
Damn, that woman knew how to drive. Like really, really fucking well. She’d executed a perfect extraction, driving like a bat out of hell (okay, kind of funny given we were in Batman’s lair right now) to get away undetected. I was proud, just unsure if I wanted her on another mission after this one.
“So, are you officially working with Falcon full-time?” Charley asked, turning her attention on Gwen.
Mya, Sydney, and Oliver had been unable to join us on this op. Griffin was wrapping up his paternity leave, going a bit stir crazy not operating, so he’d soon be joining us again. But we really had needed the extra help from Gwen and my fiance´e.
And God, I loved that word, almost as much as wife (and with any luck, I’d be upgrading to husband from fiance´ sooner rather than later).
