Page 88 of Gift Horse

She leans in even closer, her breath hot against my skin. “You want to ride me?”

How can it be that she turns from the woman sobbing in the kitchen to this delightful temptress in so short a time? She has the emotional metabolism of a cheetah. “You. Me. Us. All of it. As you will.”

She slides her leg up the back of my calf as if we have danced this dance a thousand times. No one can tango so flawlessly without practice, and yet here she is as though she has been at the Tuesday nightmilongain Buenos Aires for years on end.

“There’s somewhere I want to take you.” Her whisper on my neck sends shivers down my back.

“Where you go, I follow.”

We’re almost to the door when Pippa steps in our path. “I need him for two minutes. No more. Just got to take care of a tiny bit of business.” She taps the side of her nose. “Nod’s as good as a wink, don’t you know.”

The color drains from Lolly’s face. “But I don’t know. You never told me. Mariano?” Her grip has tightened, and I feel the fear rising from her.

No secrets. Not even high-level, industrial secrets. Not even if I go to some English jail for saying what I must.“Lolly needs to be brought in, Pippa.”

Pippa rolls her eyes. “Not now. We need to move on this.”

“Now. Or you do it without me.”

“Fine.” Pippa stomps to the bottom of the stairs, the two of us trailing in her wake. “You don’t have to sign the Official Secrets Act to be bound by it.”

Lolly startles, her eyes flashing to mine, but she covers her confusion quickly.

“That I’ve alerted you to the fact that this is sensitive information and you’re required not to share it is all that’s necessary. Say you both understand and agree.”

Lolly shrugs. “I understand and agree, I guess, though it’s all a bit James Bond, isn’t it?”

“Funny you should mention that.” Pippa goes on to explain that she does, in fact, work for MI6. That Henrietta isn’t a royal at all, but an actress. That she, Pippa, was the one undercover and in need of a front, and that nothing is as it seems.

“My apologies, Pippa. Hettie isn’t royal?”

Pippa rolls her eyes. “We recruit from some of the finest training grounds in the land, Cambridge, Oxford, Rada, etc., but she couldn’t act her way out of a pork pie wrapper. Terrible choice. Terrible. She couldn’t keep her horse facts straight, as I’m sure you noticed! Acting like a groom when she was supposed to be… ” She trails off, annoyed at herself. “Anyway. Poor choice.”

Not so terrible that we weren’t fooled. “And her job was to throw us offyourscent.”

“Quite so.” Pippa says it like it’s nothing and we shouldn’t be in the least bit surprised. Furthermore, she’s working to mend fences with ‘certain foreign powers’ by allowing, Alan, aka ‘our buffoon of a CEO’ to do some backroom deal, thereby opening a dialogue between our two governments, the details of which she’s not at liberty to discuss.

This is more than she told me. Much more. The murky waters are brackish, perhaps polluted, the danger more pronounced than I anticipated.

“We need Mariano to dilute the waters. The more this looks like a friendly, handshake deal between the very rich, the less likely it is anyone’s going to come after us. All clear, Lolly?”

“Not in the least, but I get that you need him forsomething.”

“This is the nature of the work, I’m afraid. We have a portion of the puzzle, but not the whole. We do our part and trust it’s for the best. The only hope we have is that the players don’t play foul and that we’re batting for the good guys.”

She believes in what she’s saying, but it’s not a world I could live in. I’ll do my part now, because I’ve already agreed to facilitate this trade deal (which is perhaps a front), and then wash my hands of Pippa’s world.

“Truly. I need him for five minutes.” Pippa’s scanning the room, but with such delicacy no one who didn’t know what she was doing would think her anything other than a slightly brash British woman who poked fun at her instructors and made friends wherever she went. “Ten minutes, max. But now. I need himnow.”

Lolly releases me, but her touch lingers. “I’ll be at the old wishing well when you’re done.”

The smile that breaks from me threatens to crack me in two. I’ll be done so fast the world will spin the other way. “I’ll be there. As fast as I can. Have no fear.”

“It’s not fear I’ve got.” Lolly snaps her garter. “No fear at all.”

BITE ME

Lolly Benoit. The Wishing Well. Upper Wilmington, Gloucestershire, England.

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