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slow-motion about it. She saw the flash and heard the explosion, smelled the smoke of a Molotov cocktail. Brian yelled, and then came two shots…and silence.
    “It’s okay, Marissa.” Grit’s voice, gentle, calm. “It’s over.”
    Brian Fenton wouldn’t kill Grit, or her brother, or Elijah—or her.
    She lifted her head and focused on the man she loved, standing in the moonlight.
    * * *
    Three hours later, the Camerons had a fire roaring in the big stone fireplace at Black Falls Lodge and pancakes and sausages fresh off the griddle for Grit, Marissa and a handful of Secret Service agents, who were marginally less tense and irritable than they had been after their very long night. Charlie Neal showing up at the lodge with a wounded Elijah Cameron…leading them to Marissa Neal at a remote ski house with Grit and a dead Brian Fenton.
    “Fenton left a note,” Elijah said. “He blamed the SEALs for ruining his career after they caught him running his own black market, and he blamed you specifically for stealing Marissa from him.”
    Grit dribbled hot maple syrup—what he’d been told was first-run syrup—onto his pancakes. “Kill two birds with one stone, except Marissa dumped him long before I came into the picture.”
    Elijah pointed at Grit’s forkful of pancakes. “What do you think? Is real maple syrup better than tupelo honey?”
    This from a man in a sling from a gunshot wound. Grit figured that was why he and Elijah got along. “Different. They’re both good. Are you and Jo going to have to postpone the wedding because of your shoulder?”
    “Not even for a minute.”
    Charlie Neal squeezed past a Secret Service agent and sat by the fire. “I think it should be a double wedding. You’re going to ask Marissa to marry you, right, Grit—I mean, Petty Officer Taylor?”
    Grit ate his forkful of pancakes. The syrup was damn good. He sighed as he put down his plate. “You know, Charlie, just because you think something doesn’t mean you have to say it.”
    “I’d like you as a brother-in-law. Two of my sisters are dating real dicks.”
    “You haven’t told them that, have you?”
    “I don’t know. Maybe.”
    Elijah laughed. “You’re a piece of work, my friend.” He nodded to Grit. “Go. I’ll keep Charlie out of your hair for ten minutes.”
    Grit walked into the dining room and over to the windows, where Marissa was gazing out at the view of a snowy meadow and, in the distance, snow-covered mountains. He found himself experiencing phantom pain for the first time in months, as if to remind him that Marissa Neal could say no.
    She turned to him and smiled. “I love the smells of the fire, maple syrup—and apples. I think someone’s baking pies.”
    “Marissa…”
    “I know you have to go back to Washington. Your work at the Pentagon awaits.”
    “It can wait a few more days. I knew you were on school vacation this week.” He stood next to her, tried not to show her the pain he was in from a leg he’d lost so long ago—it felt like a lifetime. “What were you thinking about?”
    “All the reasons we should be together. There’s only one that matters. I love you, and I want to spend the rest of my life with you. What were you thinking?”
    “All the reasons you should say no.”
    “You have more reasons not to ask than I have to say no.”
    Her comment took him by surprise, but that was one of the things he loved about her. She was unpredictable, totally herself. “Name one.”
    “My family. I’m a history teacher. I don’t know how to use a gun. I don’t want to know.”
    “You make a mean Molotov cocktail.”
    She waved a hand in dismissal. “As if you wouldn’t have done that yourself.”
    He caught her hand midair and held it between his. “Marissa Neal, I love you and I want to be with you forever. I don’t have a lot to offer.”
    “That’s right, you don’t. I’ve seen your apartment. Rats, Grit. Rats.” Her eyes sparkled with humor, but she couldn’t