Zander stood.

“I wanted to get you caught up and see if you needed anything.” He looked at Ava and then at Mason. “Looks like you’re in competent hands.”

He made a fast but polite exit.

Mason shook his head as they stood at the window watching Zander leave. “Man, he had it bad for you.”

Ava looked at him in surprise. “You knew? I had no idea until today.”

“A man knows,” he said mysteriously.

She wrinkled her nose at him. “Men can rarely see what’s right in front of them.”

“I saw,” Mason said, turning her toward him and pulling her against his chest. He lifted her chin. “Angels sang in my brain the first time I saw you. I just didn’t know what it meant.”

She snorted. “I call BS on that one.”

“Well, maybe it took a little longer than that. I’m happy someone placed us in each other’s paths.”

“Me, too.”

“You’re good for me, Special Agent McLane.” His expression turned deadly serious. “I didn’t ever expect to feel this way. When I saw you on the rail of that bridge, I was relieved that you were alive and completely terrified that I was about to watch you die.”

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “The whole time I worried about what you were thinking. One of the reasons I fought him so hard was to keep you from suffering if something happened to me.”

“You worried about what I was going through?”

“Hell, yes. I knew you’d be out of your mind.”

“I wanted to kill someone. When I watched him throw you in the back of the van, I was ready to rip it open with my bare hands to get at you.”

“You did.” She remembered his stricken expression when he’d flung open the cargo door. He’d been prepared to go to hell and back to get her.

He nearly had.

He’d jumped off a bridge and fought off a killer.

For her.

“I’d do it all again,” he promised, his voice husky. “I won’t let go.”

“Me neither,” she said, clutching him tighter. “Thank you for loving me.”

Mason laughed. “Agent McLane, you have no idea how easy it is to love you. And I plan to do it for the rest of my life.”

She couldn’t wait.