2 Maid in the Shade by Bridget Allison Page B

of the way. I’m safer there than I was just moments ago when you were trying to steal my virtue.” He smiled, “Wait, if I had exaggerated the danger wouldn’t you feel duty-bound to stay tonight?”
    “Gah! I never knew you to be so underhanded. When were you going to tell me ?”
    “I just found out this morning . That’s the way this works, you prepare then wait. I was just planning to ask to see you tonight. Then you called and I made arrangements for our afternoon. Everything for my work is always organized for me by the client and overseen by my assistant.”
    “Your chances of getting what you want are much better if you return in one piece, but I’ll drive you to the airport.”
    He shook his head wistfully. “You can’t.”
    “I can’t? What do you mean ?”
    “This is very competitive line of work when it comes to new opportunities in those countries. There are just a handful of us who do it but it is very cutthroat. I mean that figuratively of course. No one outside my company knows; only two there, and I won’t be flying commercial. But you can still stay the night with me,” he added hopefully.
    “ Nope, I’ve already texted Lucy twice to look after Mosey today then I turned off my phone. I imagine she has an interrogation room set up for me. Water boarding at Gitmo would have been deemed unnecessary if the government had hired Lucy.” 
    “ Well, I won’t see you for three weeks. I probably won’t be able to email or text but I’ll try to find a landline and call every two or three days if I’m able.”
    I frowned, “I understand companies and their need to keep their plans secret but this seems extreme. Just return to me.” I said, taking the remnant of lace from his lap and putting it securely in his pocket. “Call this incentive, like when boys go off to battle with pictures of their sweethearts. NOT that I am calling myself your sweetheart,” I said hastily, tucking my half in my own pocket. “But maybe I’ll let you see the replacement pair when you return safely.”
    “ I do expect to see them, briefly, then on the floor,” Ben smiled. Then handed me his phone and said, “I carry around photos of my sweetheart. Check the pictures in there.” 
    I scrolled through and saw pictures of me at Christmas, then on a sailboat laughing up at the camera, in a tree reading at their English estate. Guiltily, I remembered that I had told Jared once no one knew about my penchant for climbing trees. But I hadn’t technically told Ben; he caught me there with a book in the high crook of a tree eating an apple. When I looked down he was snapping a photo of me. I had thrown the apple at him in embarrassment which he caught handily. I remembered he had put the apple in his teeth, slung the camera around his neck and come up after me. We had spent the afternoon talking about books and plans and where we saw ourselves living someday and what the first thing we could ever remember wanting to be. I had read a book about female spies and watched countless documentaries about Jane Goodall, so I had already been torn between the two. Six years older than me, Ben had just been a member of the family I had hoped would stay awhile.
    “ I remember that day,” I said tapping the picture to enlarge it, “you said the first thing you ever wanted to be was a lorry driver.”
    “ You almost fell out of the tree laughing, I had to grab you,” he said smiling. “I couldn’t believe you got me up there at my age in the first place.”
    B en still had a wistful smile on his face as he pulled into the front of his building. As a valet started to move toward us Ben waved him away.
    “ Unbuckle so you can be in the driver’s seat,” he said, removing his own. He jumped out of the Rover and came around to open my door.
    A s he walked me back he reached for the handle, and then stopped. Pressing me against the space between the two driver’s side doors where we were out of sight of the valet and front