Her image filled his laptop screen. The smallish picture on the PDA didn’t quite satisfy his need.
Lizzy was at the window facing the ocean. A familiar stance for her lately. She had been at the window every night since he had brought her home after Dani’s death.
Unlike those other nights when he had watched her in silence, his observation was interrupted by the shrill ring of his cell phone. “Spaulding.”
“Aidan. Ms. de Hayes has advised that she should be arriving in Paris in two days. Are you prepared to meet her?”
Was he? he wondered. When Corbett had mentioned continuing with the next part of this assignment, he’d been eager. After all, it entailed tracking down Dani’s killer and someone who might be a possible threat to Lizzy.
A good reason to leave Leonia and Lizzy. Or so he’d thought.
But faced with the prospect of it now…
“Aidan? You have terminated your surveillance of Ms. Moore, haven’t you?” Corbett asked and Aidan sensed that the other man somehow knew about the remaining camera.
He didn’t have it in him to lie. “No, sir. But…”
He could have said that he’d remove it immediately, but he couldn’t. He needed that connection to her. Hell, he needed her.
For days he had been telling himself otherwise. Trying to convince himself that staying in Leonia would be as boring as shit. That there was nothing there to keep his interest.
Except Lizzy. And some really nice people. Her crazy friends. Some fine fishing and surfing areas. Beautiful gardens and cute little homes along the road and the stunning coast and beachfront.
“Aidan?” Corbett prompted again and this time, Aidan knew exactly what to say.
“While working with Rhia would be quite an experience, I’ve decided that it’s time I resigned my position with the Lazlo Group.”
“Are you sure about this?” Corbett asked, and Aidan shot another peek at his laptop.
Was he?
The answer came immediately.
“I’m sure, Corbett.”
The other man chuckled, surprising him. “This is getting to be a costly operation for my group. First Walker resigns and now you.”
“I’m sorry if this leaves you in a lurch.”
“Not to worry, Aidan. Rhia can probably handle this job on her own for the moment. Despite the Sparrow’s deathbed information, I can’t see Nikolas Donovan as her killer,” Corbett advised, confusing Aidan with the statement.
“What? Donovan’s Union for Democracy has splintered into two factions, one of them violent. What makes you believe Donovan isn’t responsible for that violent bent and Dani’s death?” Aidan questioned.
“Lord Southgate is quite familiar with Nikolas Donovan. He believes him innocent in Reginald’s death and also in that of the Sparrow.”
Aidan wasn’t quite as convinced. “If Rhia needs backup, I’m there,” he said, guilt driving him. He liked the woman, who had an adventurous streak and could be a refreshing smart ass at times.
“I appreciate the offer, but if I’m right, we won’t be needing your muscle on this one,” Corbett advised and then quickly added, “And you, Mr. Spaulding, have a lady to contact.”
He peeked at the laptop and cursed beneath his breath when he saw her room was empty. But he knew where she would go. Where she always went when she was troubled. “Goodbye, Corbett. It’s been a pleasure.”
“Not goodbye, Aidan. I do expect an invitation to the wedding.”
He chuckled at the other man’s audacity. “You’ll get it,” he said, not that Corbett Lazlo would show. In the seven years that he had worked for the man, he had never met him.
But that was for another day. First he had to get the lady in question to agree to marry him.
Grabbing his jacket, he raced out of the hotel and down the public-access ramp to the beach. Much as he had expected, she was walking down the beach, headed in his direction. When she noticed him, she paused and wrapped her arms around herself, waited there for a moment before continuing toward him.
No coward, his Lizzy.
He didn’t wait. He hopped down onto the sand and raced in her direction. When they finally stood facing one another, barely a foot apart, he said, “Lizzy.”
Duh. Totally stupid. Inane.
“Aidan. I would have thought that you’d be gone by now.” Her arms remained wrapped around herself and she rubbed her hands up and down in a telling gesture.
He reached out, laid his hands over hers to still that motion. “I would have thought so, too, only…I couldn’t imagine leaving you, Lizzy.”
Elizabeth’s breath caught in her throat with his words. Was she imagining this? She shook her head in disbelief. “I don’t understand, Aidan.”
He smiled and his blue eyes glittered with joy as he said, “I don’t understand, either. Maybe it’s because I’ve found an adventure more compelling than any other.”
“An adventure,” she repeated, unsure of what he meant.
“Yes. You. And if you’ll have me, I can’t imagine a more interesting and challenging way to spend my life,” he said and took hold of her hands, dropped to one knee.
“Marry me, Lizzy.”
This was insane. Totally outrageous. And yes, possibly an adventure. One she was willing to risk with the man kneeling before her. “On one condition.”
“Just one? As I recall, you had quite a few that night,” he teased, raising one sandy brow playfully.
She laughed and embraced him, urged him to rise. “Do you think you could be happy here in little ol’ Leonia?”
“I can be happy anywhere you are, Lizzy,” he answered and as she searched his features, she recognized the truth of his statement.
She trailed her hands down and twined her fingers with his. “Can you be happy being my bartender?”
Aidan grimaced. “That may take a little…No, make that a long while. Unless I can develop something,” he said and pulled out his PDA, began explaining to her how he had managed to survive behind the bar.
“So let me get this,” she began as he sketched his idea for a new bar area filled with electronic gadgets with the stylus of his PDA. “You’re ex-military. An MIT grad in electronics. Anything else I should know?”
“That I love you. Totally and completely love you. All the rest, you can learn in the years to come,” he said and, grabbing hold of her hand, gave it a playful shake. “So, will you marry me?”
“When you put it that way, how can a girl refuse?”
Epilogue
The stone-and-bronze marker matched the one laid over a decade earlier for her parents.
Elizabeth knelt and ran her hands over the words engraved in the bronze.
Danielle Elizabeth Moore. September 10, 1980—August 22, 2006. She was everyone’s champion.
She wondered who had decided to add the last. Corbett Lazlo possibly?
“Lizzy, you okay?” Aidan asked and kneeled beside her. In his hand he held a bouquet of flowers she had cut from the garden earlier that morning.
“I’m okay.”
“There’s a big ‘except’ there, Lizzy. What is it?” he asked and laid his free hand over hers as it rested on Dani’s grave marker. The sun caught the gold band on his ring finger. It glinted brightly against the darker color of the bronze and the even deeper brown of the freshly turned earth.
“I’ve been waiting for months for Dani to come home. I thought it would bring closure.”
“But?” he pressed.
“I can feel her, Aidan. As if she was still alive. Still with me,” she urged; for in the many months since Dani had been carried away in the ambulance, her sister’s presence remained strong.
“Lizzy, I can’t begin to understand this twin thing. But I do understand you. If you believe this, I won’t argue with you.”
She smiled, leaned close and kissed the side of his face. “How like a husband, you sound. Indulging me in this even if you don’t believe.”
Aidan laid the bouquet o
f flowers along the top of the grave marker and then cradled her face in his hands. “I will always be at your side. Stand by whatever you believe, Lizzy. Believe that.”
The amazing thing was that she did. She trusted Aidan as she had no else before, except for Dani. But unlike Dani, Aidan had shown her he was here to stay.
It might have started off as just another mission for him, but now it was more. He was her champion. She was his home. It couldn’t be any more perfect than that.
ISBN: 978-1-4268-1744-1
MORE THAN A MISSION
Copyright © 2006 by Harlequin Books S.A.
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