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Chapter Twenty

Epilogue

"So how does it feel to be a millionaire, sweetheart?" Blake asked softly.

Josephine smiled. "Huh! You tell me—you should know!"

He laughed. Giuseppi's revolutionary organic weed killer had been launched to ecstatic worldwide response and the shares had been floated on the stock market last week, leaving him with his biggest ever success on his hands.

No. Not his.

"You know, it's your success, sweetheart. All yours." He leaned over to plant a kiss on her lips. "If it hadn't been for your stubbornness and determination—I would never have backed him. I should have listened to you from the outset."

"But why should you have done?" she asked him. "You were the expert—"

"Supposedly," he interjected dryly.

"It was just an instinctive feeling that it was all going to come good."

As they had done together. More than good. Blake had once said that Giuseppi had looked as though he had died and gone to heaven—well, he now had a pretty good idea of how he must have felt!

"And yet you ruthlessly refused to be instinctive about marrying me," he mused. "When I knew you wanted to. We keep acting out-of-character around each other, don't we, Josie?"

She considered this. "Or maybe it's just that we bring out the best in each other," she said seriously. "Exploring the sides of ourselves that we'd never really looked at before."

He smiled. "Happy?"

"Ecstatic would be an understatement!"

"That's a 'yes,' is it?" he teased.

They were sitting outside on Blake's roof garden in the glorious, golden summer sunshine, just contemplating whether to eat in or go out for supper.

And contemplating other things, as well.

Josephine's divorce had come through and Luke had paid back most of the money. She was now financially more than solvent and well respected within the company—more important, she now respected herself. She sighed. It didn't get much better than this. The board had just agreed to promote her, and she was living with the man she loved.

"It's been well over a year since I first moved in here with you," she observed, a note of surprise in her voice. "Hard to believe, isn't it?"

In some ways, yes—in others, not at all. Time was immeasurable when you were happy, Blake realized, and he was happier than he had imagined it possible to be.

He kissed her again, just for the hell of it. "You know, maybe you were right, sweetheart, maybe we don't need a wedding ring to be committed to one another."

Josephine frowned. "I don't remember saying that."

"Not in so many words, perhaps." He shrugged. "But marriage to Luke scared you off, I know that, and the last thing I want is for you to enter into an institution that makes you uneasy. I'm not going anywhere, honey—and we don't need a wedding to prove it."

The frown grew deeper. "Are you saying that you no longer want to marry me?"

With great difficulty, he bit back a smile. "That's not what I'm saying at all," he corrected smoothly. "Just I'm perfectly happy with the status quo. Aren't you?"

Suddenly, no she was not! "I do want to get married, actually," she said sulkily, but the soft blaze from his eyes teased a smile out of her. "I've been waiting for you to ask me again!"

He shook his head and a mischievous light glinted in the blue eyes. "Oh, no—we've done it that way round and you said no. So in the spirit of our wonderful and very equal relationship, I really think you ought to ask me, Josephine."

"I'm not getting down on one knee, if that's what you think!"

"Why not sit on my knee instead?" he suggested gravely.

She did as he asked, perched herself comfortably and erotically over one hard, muscular thigh and looked deep into his eyes. "Will you marry me, Blake?"

"I'll have to think about it."

"For how long?" she cried, trying to keep the alarm from her voice.

He enjoyed the moment. "Oh, for about—say—five seconds." He grinned. "Of course I'll marry you, Josephine—though I thought you'd never ask, you stubborn woman!"

He kissed her for a very long time and as she kissed him back her last rational thought was that Blake knew exactly how to handle her.

In more ways than one!