Page 17 of Six
“It’s good, yes?” she asked, her fork held halfway to her mouth.
“You know it is,” he countered, then took another bite.
She inclined her head and slipped her own bite between her lips. When she was done, she swallowed a sip of her beer, then spoke again. “It is good. I think it’s very good. But just because I think it’s good doesn’t mean you have to like it. Devil swears by a certain type of foie gras. She says it’s the best in the world. She might be right, she probably is, but I can’t stand the stuff, so the quality is irrelevant.”
He filed that little tidbit away in his head for future reference. He’d learned a lot about Violetta from the files they’d given him, but he didn’t know she didn’t like foie gras. Which worked out well, since he’d didn’t like it either.
“There are lots of reasons not to like foie gras. But so long as you’re not a vegetarian, there is absolutely no reason someone would not like this,” he said, pointing to the shepherd’s pie with his fork.
She smiled, a small upward tip of the left side of her mouth. And just like that, his body was once again focused on her and everything he wanted to do to, and with, her.
He cleared his throat, then sipped his drink. “So, what about last night?” he asked, bringing the topic back to something that might dampen his reaction to her.
She looked at him without a hint of guile. “What about last night?”
“The car that tried to run you off the road. You remember that? They took a shot at you.” She remembered; she just didn’t want to talk to him about it. She might be coming to accept that he was one of the good guys, but like the food, that didn’t mean she had to like him or the job he was sent to do.
“I can’t do my job if you don’t talk with me,” he pointed out.
She snorted. “I don’t actually care if you can or can’t do your job. That seems like ayouproblem.”
Gavin couldn’t help it, he barked out a laugh. Her answer wassoVioletta. And he didn’t doubt her veracity in the least. In some ways, he didn’t blame her. If AISE sent someone to be his backup as he went about his daily life, he wouldn’t care about their job either. His loyalty was to England and its subjects, and hers was to Italy and its subjects. Their interests might overlap at times, but they had no duty to each other.
She might not have adutyto care about him, but he had every intention of making sure shegrewto care.
“Fair enough,” he said. “Will you answer questions if I ask them?”
“Depends on the questions.”
He hadn’t expected anything less. “Was the incident last night related to your friend’s death?”
“His murder,” she corrected, giving him his answer. He hadn’t hesitated to flip the small SUV when he’d seen what the two people inside were trying to do to Violetta. Now that he knew they were responsible for, or at least involved in, Jeremy Wheaton’s death, he had even less sympathy.
“They followed you from his apartment,” he said. It wasn’t a question. He was taking a risk letting Violetta know he’d followed her, too—first to Jeremy’s, then home—but again, if he wanted her trust, he had to offer his.
“Apparently they weren’t the only ones following me,” she replied, her right eyebrow ever so slightly elevated. It was the subtlest reaction he’d seen from her, and it made him a little nervous.
“I haven’t followed you before,” he said, meeting her stare with a direct one of his own. “I have checked in on you, but until last night, I’d never actually followed you.”
“Still, the fact that you did, and I didn’t notice—or the fact thattheydid and I didn’t notice until they were nearly on my bumper—is…well, it’s disconcerting.”
“I can see how you might feel that way. I would too. But the truth is, you have no reason to think that anything like what happened last night would happen here. For all intents and purposes, you’re a civilian in this country. So am I. There should be no reason anyone here would want to harm you.” It was a little bit of a stretch—intelligence agents gathered enemies faster than flies on shit sometimes. But he’d seen her dossier, or the parts of it that hadn’t been redacted, and the kind of ops she ran would be impossible to tie back to her unless there was a leak at AISE.
She took the last sip of her drink and set her glass down. “I’ve noticed a boat occasionally trawling by my house, about a hundred yards out. Any chance that’s you?”
He grinned. “I always wanted a boat. I negotiated it into my assignment, saying it would be an easy way to keep an eye on you given the security at your house.”
She paused, then, to his delight, threw her head back and laughed. A big, honest laugh. When she settled down, she reached for her napkin and dabbed her eyes before taking a sip of the water that had been left at the table with their beers. “I wish I could have seen those negotiations,” she said. “I’ve met a few ranking officers from the British Army. They don’t tend to have a great sense of humor and probably had no idea you were poking at them, did they?”
Gavin smiled. “They did not. It was allveryserious. Except your friend, the spook. He took my side and argued for a bigger boat, saying the waters around here could get rough and I needed something more substantial than a dinghy. Personally, I think he was having as much fun poking at the army as I was.”
She let out a small laugh at that. “Yes, Franklin takes great joy in manipulating people.”
A waiter came over to clear their plates, asking if they wanted dessert or another drink. Gavin looked to Violetta. He wasn’t ready for the evening to be over, and he still wanted to talk to her about Jeremy. But if she didn’t want to talk, he couldn’t force her.
To his surprise, she ordered an amaro, as did he. Not only did they appear to share the same taste in drinks, but by ordering, she’d willingly prolonged their time together. It was a small thing, but he felt as if he’d come out the winner of a prizefight.
“What was Jeremy like?” he asked. If he was going to be her backup, he needed to know everything there was to know—about the crime and about Jeremy, but also about what Violetta was thinking. She wasn’t willing to share anything about the crime or her thought process, but maybe he could get her talking about her friend. He had a feeling that she’d inadvertently stepped into a hornet’s nest, and the more he knew, the more he could watch her back.
