I kissed him. It had taken me a long time to learn I could do that without searching for an excuse afterward. Now I was grateful he’d be there when I asked JJ to marry me, and that I’d gotten smart enough to tell him so.
“Love you too,” I said.
“Good. Now quit squeezing the box. You’re going to bend something.”
Inside, JJ was finishing the dishes while Millie negotiated for another chapter of her bedtime book. There’d been a period when our evenings involved patrols, phone calls, and checking doors because we couldn’t be certain what Donald or Hell’s Fire would do next. We still paid attention. I wasn’t stupid. But tonight Millie’s biggest problem was that her book had ended on an inconvenient page.
“Just one more chapter,” she pleaded when she saw me.
“Didn’t Mommy already answer?” I
