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And if her heart was right, if Matthew didn’t know the truth about Douglas, telling him too much would put him in danger, too.
“There’s not much to talk about,” she said with a quick smile.
Matthew brought her hand to his mouth. “I’ll bet there is. What’s your favorite ice cream flavor? Who’s gonna win the pennant this year? Do you like to watch football? Can you understand a word Bob Dylan says? How do you feel about Mahler?”
“Mahler?” she said, lifting her eyebrows.
“Yeah. Too much—or not enough?”
Mia laughed. “Chocolate,” she said, “the Red Sox. Yes, no, too much.”
Matthew grinned. “A woman who knows her own mind. I like that.”
“What about you?”
“Strawberry. The Yankees. Yes, no—”
“I meant, why did Douglas hire you to come after me?”
She hadn’t meant to say it, the words just tumbled out. She blinked and saw Matthew’s smile disappear.
“Matthew. I didn’t mean—”
“That’s okay. Straight to the nitty-gritty. Hell, why not?” The muscle in his jaw knotted. “For instance, what made you come to Colombia?”
She stared at him. The truth leaped to the tip of her tongue. She longed to tell it to him. To explain that one day she’d been a secretary and the next, a nameless agency had turned her into a spy.
“It’s a simple question, baby. How about answering it?”
Matthew was still smiling, but his eyes had narrowed in that way she’d come to know meant he was analyzing every word. Okay. She’d tell him the truth—as much as she could.
“It was—I guess you’d call it a fluke. I was a secretary in Washington. And then my boss told me there was an opening in Cartagena. He asked if I’d be interested.”
“And you said sure, just like that.”
“Yes. Just like—”
“Had you applied for a transfer?”
“Well, no.”
“Are you fluent in Spanish?”
“Not fluent, but—”
“But, wham, just like that, your boss decided to send you to Cartagena. Is that right?”
Her fingers were still linked with Matthew’s. She wanted to pull them free. It felt wrong to have his hand on hers when his voice, and his eyes, had turned into those of a stranger.
“Don’t take that tone with me,” she said softly.
“I’m just trying to figure things out. I mean, hell, it’s like you were Dorothy, caught up in that tornado, you know? The old, ‘I guess this isn’t Kansas anymore, Toto,’ thing. D.C. one day. Cartagena the next. As Hamilton’s personal assistant.” His tone hardened. “Living in his big, expensive mausoleum in the hills.”
“I’d worked for Douglas before, when he was on assignment in Washington.”
“So, it wasn’t a fluke. Hamilton put in a special request. He asked Washington to give you to him.”
“Nobody ‘gave’ me to Douglas.”
