"Kit around?"

"Yeah," Jimmy told him. "It's paperwork day again. You want me to buzz him?"

"Nah. I'll surprise him."

Jimmy grinned. "That man will do anything to avoid paperwork."

Malcolm laughed. "Can you blame him?"

"Hell, no."

Malcolm rapped on the office door. Kit's "Yeah, it's open" sounded vastly relieved

Malcolm slid back the door and kicked off his shoes. He held up his mail. "Package from Margo. There's one for you, too, waiting at Customs."

Kit came around the desk like a thrown baseball: "Well, open it!"

Malcolm tore the seals and ripped open the cardboard. Inside was a metal box which he tilted carefully out. The lid slipped back to reveal a single item: a glittering diamond in the rough, nearly as big as Malcolm's thumbnail.

Kit whooped. "She did it!"

Malcolm held it up to the light, then whistled. She sure had. "That," Malcolm sighed, "is truly beautiful." And if she still felt the same way in a few months, maybe he'd even have it made into a ring ...

Well, stranger things had happened to him lately. Their parting had been enough to shake both of them to the core. Who knew? Maybe she'd even broken his notorious string of bad luck?

Now that would be a switch.

"I think," Malcolm grinned, "this calls for a celebration."

Kit broke out champagne from his private stock and poured bubbly, then handed over a glass. "How about a toast?"

Malcolm waited expectantly.

Kit lifted his glass. "To the best damn time scouts in La La Land. Partner." He slid over a signed document giving Malcolm and Margo each a third-share interest in the land Kit had bought from Goldie Morran. Malcolm just gaped.

"You earned it. We all did. Hope you don't mind paying Kynan Rhys Gower out of our joint profits?"

Malcolm's eyes misted. "Hear, hear. I'd say that's a bargain any day of the week." They touched glasses with a musical clink.

"Now, partner," Kit grinned, "about that story you were going to tell me... the one about Caligula's murder and Claudius' ascension to the Principate of Rome."

"Oh, no," Malcolm laughed. "First you have to spill the beans about what really happened when you spent the night hiding under Queen Victoria's bed."

Kit grinned. "I never compromise a lady. You first." No one, Malcolm chuckled, could bamboozle and flummox his way out of the truth like a time scout. At last, La-La Land was back to normal. Thank God. Malcolm settled back in one of Kit's chairs and started spinning the tallest tale he could concoct about that day in Rome five years previously-and two thousand years in the past-and made himself a silent promise.

If Margo could risk it, so could he. Malcolm Moore and Margo Smith, Time Scouts ...

It had a nice ring to it.