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He has been looking down the bar to signal the bartender, but he turns to her and gives an almost imperceptible start, a brief widening of deep brown eyes and the slightest parting of the lips.
“Oh.” It isn’t a whisper; it is an exhalation, a statement. He gives her a long look that seems to say,It’s you. Finally.
“Yeah,” she answers. He turns back to the bartender and lifts his hand as he levers himself onto the stool beside her. Aminute later the bartender sets a beer in front of him, the liquid in the bottle fizzing gently. He swings it to his mouth and takes a long swallow, looks hard at her, then takes another.
“I don’t think I have it in me to play this cool,” he says finally. He takes another deep drink.
“Me either. Or maybe I’ve just seen too many Streisand movies. I mean, the way she looks at Robert Redford and he looks back...” She lets her voice trail off. She isn’t wrong about what is happening, and the fact that he feels it too seems like a very small miracle. But she doesn’t believe in miracles. She reminds herself they are strangers. Perfect, combustible strangers.
“Shit,” he says, putting the beer carefully onto the bar. “As much as I’d like to forget about the job right now, there’s no way we can—”
“I know that,” she tells him.
“It’s my first time leading a mission and there are rules about fraternization,” he says more to himself than to her. “I can’t screw this up.” In spite of the rugged American clothes, there is the slightest lilt of an English accent.
“You won’t.”
He takes another drink of his beer, pulling down half the bottle while she swallows the lukewarm Chablis. He turns to her. “I already have. We’ve forgotten the protocol. Do you like baseball?”
She struggles for a minute with the non sequitur, then remembers the code. “Yes, but I’m afraid I’m a Cubs fan. No chance of making the Series this year.”
“Not since they traded Burris.” He finishes the exchange.
They spend the next few minutes drinking silently. “Christopher Taverner,” he says finally. “Kit.”
“Billie Webster.”
“I know.” He lifts one brow and her cheeks go hot. Of course he knows. As leader of the mission, he’d have been given her dossier complete with photos. “They don’t do you justice, by the way,” he tells her, intuiting her thoughts.
“Well, they didn’t get my best side,” she says.
He laughs, sharp and sudden, and there is a roughness to the sound that makes her want to drown in it.
“So, what now, English?” she asks.
The brow is back. She will get to know that brow well, always cocked at the same angle as his mouth when he is amused. “English?”
“The accent. I’m very observant.”
“I can see that. Well, ordinarily, this conversation would move to a more private place, like my room,” he says softly, nodding upwards. “But in the circumstances, I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“Probably not,” she agrees.
He smiles, a crooked, lopsided smile that carries just enough sadness to break what is left of her heart. His gaze drops to her mouth, to the tiny scar just above her lip.
“What happened there?”
“I got in a fight with a raccoon.” The smile flickers up, then his eyes grow serious.
“Do I need to kick someone’s ass?” He puffs his chest just enough to shift a pendant loose from the neck of his shirt. It is a small medallion of some sort, but she can’t make it out.She drags her eyes away from the golden hair on his chest as she answers him.
“I already did.”
“Good. You can be the muscle in this relationship.”
“Relationship?”
“Oh yeah. I figure we’ll last a few weeks trying to pretend this isn’t happening and then jack it all in to run away together and spend the rest of our lives having lots of sex and babies.”
