Free Darkness at Dawn by Elizabeth Jennings

hand, resigned.
    Lucy was tracking his file, nodding at his answers. “What are your hobbies?”
    “Polo and golf, they’re my favorites.” Mike would rather have his nuts caught in a thresher than play polo or golf, two asinine activities if ever there were any. Chasing balls around, what the fuck? No, he loved the outdoors, always had, always would. White-water rafting, backpacking and above all mountain climbing, something Michael Harrington would probably never do in his entire pampered existence. “As a matter of fact, I was polo champ—what are you doing ?” he asked in alarm. Someone was fitting little foam thingies between his fucking toes !
    The girl at his feet looked up, startled. “Giving you a pedicure, sir.” She held his foot up by his big toe in disgust, as if his foot were a big, hairy rat. “No one would ever believe you were anything but a homeless man with feet like these. Sir.”
    Lucy elbowed him in the ribs. “Be a man. Honey.”
    “I have no intention of walking around barefoot,” Mike grumbled, but it was a lost battle. He looked at her equipment. “Do what you do, but no polish. Hands or feet.” The girl’s chin firmed in a mulish pout. He put real command in his voice, a tone guaranteed to make his men snap to. “I trust that’s clear.” She nodded, expression rebellious.
    “Where’d you go to school?” Lucy asked, and he turned to her gratefully.
    “Yale. Majored in economics, minored in statistical analysis.”
    “Uh-huh,” she said, eyes on the file on her knees. “Where did we meet?”
    Mike pulled a blank. Utter and complete blank. Nothing going on up there. Just some wind and lint blowing around in a big empty room.
    Lucy’s face was bland as she looked up at him. “Darling, don’t you remember? We met my last year of graduate school, right after the end of the spring semester. It was a beautiful day in late May. You were playing at Brandywine, and I accompanied my best friend from Georgetown, Carrie Martin, to the match. Her brother was playing, too. I didn’t know anything about polo, but you were very dashing on your horse. It was one of those perfect early summer evenings where the shadows grow longer and longer, you know? Carrie introduced us, and you invited me out for drinks that very evening. And dinner the next evening. And the evening after that. We dated for three years, taking turns shuttling between New York and Washington. I learned a little about polo and you learned a little about art history. I started taking riding lessons and you started a small-scale art collection. We got engaged this September.” Half that luscious mouth curved up. “Surely you remember, darling .”
    Well, fuck . No one had thought to write up their background as a couple. The CIA had as many employees as a small city, supersmart every single one of them, basically undercover work was what they did, and not one had come up with their romantic history. Even though the two of them were going into a dangerous situation predicated on their being a couple.
    It was really lucky that Lucy was capable of thinking on her feet. The way she’d recounted the story was absolutely convincing.
    As a matter of fact, she’d almost convinced him . Because, well, if he were a polo-playing kind of guy, which he wasn’t, and a falling-in-love-at-first-sight kind of guy, which he wasn’t, well that scenario sounded pretty good. Because Lucy Merritt was exactly the kind of woman a polo-playing investment banker would fall for, head over heels, at once.
    He could see it, could almost feel it. A summer evening, long shadows playing over the polo field, the distant thwack! of the mallet, the smell of grass . . .
    “What did we have that first evening?”
    Lucy had leaned over and was going through the clothes they’d brought over for him. High-end, high-maintenance clothes. Stiff cotton shirts that for sure required ironing, expensive-looking suits, cuff links. Cuff links! Like a spook!