The Coffee Shop Job

She wasn’t his type. Not that he had one type, exactly. Something about her caught his attention, though. He studied her while waiting for the cute barista (also not his type, but in an entirely ‘she’s too young’ way) to finish his order. She was sitting alone in a booth, surrounded by books, papers, and a copy of Jane’s Historic Aircraft that he wouldn’t have expected, necessarily, from a blogger on a Saturday morning. And then there was her typewriter. Not a laptop, not a tablet with a keyboard. An honest to god typewriter. He thought he could hear the keys striking over the bustle in the coffee shop. Also, she clearly thought nobody could tell she’d slid her shoes off, but there they were, backs against the wall of the booth, her feet twisted up under her like a pretzel.

“Spencer?” Announced the barista. He flashed a smile at her and dropped a tip in the jar with a wink.

“Now,” he thought. “Let’s just see.”

He had time to kill anyway. His mark wouldn’t be passing this window for another twenty minutes.

She had no idea he was standing there. Almost, he was offended and thought maybe she was ignoring him, but then realized that she had been typing at a steady pace since he’d left the counter. She was in the zone. Deep in the zone.

“Crowded in here, isn’t it?” He asked with a smile. She nearly jumped straight out of the booth.

“I’m sorry, are you talking to me?” He stared, caught in her startled, greenish gaze.

“Hard to find a seat in here today,” he continued amiably, gesturing with a copy of yesterday’s paper; he only wanted a place to drink his coffee and read, his expression implied. She looked around at the restaurant, which was obviously half empty and in which there were plenty of seats, completely baffled.

“Would…would you like to sit down?” she asked slowly. “Please excuse the mess.”

“No problem,” he answered, unfolding the paper to old news, pretending to read.

The noise from her typewriter dropped considerably. He chuckled to himself; she was clearly curious. He snuck a glance to find her…still typing like a fiend and not even looking a little in his direction.

“Did your typewriter just get quieter?”

“It did,” she confirmed. “Some people don’t like the noise. So I installed a volume control. It’s easier than fighting with people on what’s an appropriate amount of key noise.”

His immediate thought was that he’d be glad to fight someone on her behalf over keyboard noise.

“Then it’s, what, a laptop or something?”

“Oh no. It’s a 1932 Underwood Portable.”

That meant pretty much nothing to him, but she seemed proud of it. It was a weird thing to be proud of, he guessed, but no more or less weird than the things Hardison carried on about.

“I just kinda modified it into a digital machine, since ribbons are hard to find now.” She said it like she’d finished a weekend craft project, not turned a business machine into an entirely other type of business machine.

“Uh huh,” he said, totally at sea and now trying to remember why he’d started this conversation.

“The typewriter noise just helps me think,” she explained further. “Hopefully it will keep this from being a narrative disaster.”

“You’re a blogger?” A man who was not paying attention would have missed the definite look of annoyance that flashed across her face.

“I’m writing a novel.” He also would have missed the definite determination in her voice.

“Romance?” He grinned.

“Well, it’s about a British spy ring during World War II, but I suppose I could turn it into a rom-com at the last minute. Wouldn’t be the worst thing to happen to it.”

He could use Hardison just about now, because this was not going the way he imagined it would.

“You’re a novelist?” He could wrestle this conversation back on to the road he wanted to take. Maybe. “Like, that’s what you do?”

“I’m actually a professor,” she said. “History. America on the home front from the Revolution through the 1950s. Writing is the side hobby I thought would be a good idea. What do you do?”

An excellent question, except that it was also one for which he wasn’t prepared.

“I’m…I’m…”

“Wait, let me guess,” she smiled. Finally. “You’re a rancher?”

He breathed out a small sigh of relief.

“You think I look like a cowboy,” he asked, pleased when she nodded. “I’m a…retrieval specialist.”

She nodded again. He had a vaguely tough look; whether or not his story was true, it was at least believable.

Out the window, he saw his mark approaching 7 minutes early. Dammit, Hardison.

He reached a hand across the table.

“Eliot Spencer,” he introduced himself. “To whom do I have the pleasure?”

“Ophelia Mason,” she answered, shaking his hand tentatively, still not sure he wasn’t here to sell her something.

He stood, apparently now in a hurry, reaching for his cell phone to extract a card.

“Do you mind if I call you?” he asked. “I hate to just run out, but I see my next appointment coming up the street.” He scrawled his number on the back of the card with her pen.

“You gave me your card,” she stammered in confusion. “How will you…?”

He was gone. Almost as if he had vanished. The barista came over to collect his empty mug. Ophelia stared at his business card. Leverage and Associates was not a name with which she was familiar.

“Did he look like a debt collector to you?” she asked. The barista shrugged.

That, it seemed, was that.

One thoroughly beaten henchman later, he found Hardison and Parker in the Leverage offices above Hardison’s bar.

“First off, Hardison, your time was wrong. The guy was seven minutes early.”

“You got him, didn’t you?”

“Yeah, I got him, but plus or minus seven minutes is a pretty big window, man!”

“Was there a second?” he asked, with a glance for Parker. She shrugged, agreeing that Eliot seemed to be in a bad mood but without any obvious clues, no idea what to do about it.

Eliot shoved his hands in his pockets, suddenly bashful.

“Come on, you can tell us.”

“I met this girl this morning,” he started.

“Where?” Parker asked. “Was she the reason the guy was early? Is she a spy?”

“Parker!”

“What? I’m helping!”

“You’re not,” he growled. “I just…well, first I need her number, because I told her I’d call. But I don’t know a lot about her, so I don’t know what to…do.”

“Wait, wait, hold up a second,” Hardison interrupted. “You want me to find a girl for you?”

“It’s not like finding a girl,” Eliot snapped. “I know who she is. She’s a history professor named Ophelia Mason who’s writing a novel.”

“A history professor where?”

“A university, Hardison! Where else do they have professors?”

Alec sat back and typed things into his computer, attempting to track down one professor on very little information.

“I know what you can do!” Parker offered. Eliot braced himself for the worst. “Hardison and I could kidnap her and you could rescue her! Wouldn’t that be fun?”

“Parker, you can’t…Kidnapping is…You don’t commit a felony and call it a date!”

He left on that note, considering whether or not she might like to be rescued before rejecting the idea as completely insane.

“I was just trying to help,” she insisted. Hardison nodded, well aware she thought she was helping.

Sophie was editing a script with a red pen, drinking coffee out of a mug that read DIVA in shiny red letters.

“Whatcha got there?” he asked, trying to appear casual.

“Spill it,” she instructed. “What do you want.”

“I met a girl,” he started.

“Stop spilling it. I don’t want to know,” she retracted.

“It’s not like that,” he said, extremely frustrated that his team should be so completely unhelpful. “This one’s different.”

“So you know her name? That’s a step in the right direction.” She still hadn’t looked up from her draft.

“This one’s different, I’m telling you!”

She set her pen aside, trying not to sigh audibly.

“Different how?”

“She’s not my type.”

“I really don’t—”

“She’s a professor, for one thing. And a writer.”

Sophie waited until she realized nothing else was forthcoming.

“And you think she won’t be impressed with you.”

“I mean…maybe. She’s, like, smart and stuff.”

“Hardison’s smart, he likes you.”

But Hardison didn’t have long reddish hair and greenish eyes and sit with his feet crossed under him typing on a Saturday morning while eating cinnamon bagels. Well, maybe he did eat bagels, but it wasn’t the same.

“Oh,” Sophie continued, suddenly enlightened, “she didn’t immediately fall all over herself the instant she met you, so you think for this one you’ll need something more than a dashing smile and those beautiful blue eyes.”

“Something like that,” he admitted. Grudgingly. Also: this one?

“Eliot, find something that she likes, get tickets for it, and take her. Act interested in what she has to say. A lot of smart women are into…rugged men.”

“You think I look rugged?”

An hour later, Hardison had an impressively complete dossier about Ophelia Mason. If Eliot had been a regular guy, he would have been a little freaked out by the amount of information in the folder.

“I don’t get it,” Hardison admitted. “Like, she’s not a spy or an assassin or even into MMA. Are you sure that’s her name?”

Eliot studied the picture for a moment. It was pulled from some social media account, taken by someone else, and a candid shot. Like most people, she’d probably picked it because she looked good in it, but wasn’t that the point?

“Nah, that’s her,” Eliot replied. “She’s just, she’s different. You know?”

“I’ve heard.”

“Listen, man, before I call her, do I need to set up one of these face thing pages or whatever? So she won’t think I’m some kind of weirdo?”

“That won’t be why she thinks you’re a weirdo. What did you tell her? I mean, I can use one of your old aliases or something, get it all set up for you.”

Eliot recognized a trap when he saw it.

“I told her my real name.”

“For real?”

“Hardison!”

“Fine. What did you tell her you do? Or did you get that far? I mean, how different was she?”

“I told her I was a retrieval specialist.” Hardison raised a skeptical eyebrow. “It’s true!”

“Fine. No, you shouldn’t need a “face page” or anything,” he said, with an extremely sarcastic set of air quotes. “If she thinks you’re a retrieval specialist and not some kind of psycho, that’s reason enough not to be on social media. Keeps people from tracking you or whatever through your page. That sounds believable. Try to remember it.”

An entire day later, Hardison dropped another packet in from of him.

“The hell is this? A family tree? Dammit, Hardison, nobody wants to know this much about someone.”

“You didn’t ask, but I looked it up anyway. I decided it might be a good idea to make sure Ophelia Mason isn’t related at all to ChAoS. And it pains me to say that, by the way.”

The thought had never crossed Eliot’s mind.

“Is she?”

“Not according to all that,” Hardison said. “And I can’t find any evidence in anything she has that mentions they’ve ever met. But better safe than sorry, because it wouldn’t surprise me at all if ChAoS threw a girl out in front of you to distract you from something else.”

“Listen! I—”

“You’re welcome,” Hardison finished. “She’s part French, so good luck with that.”

Friday evening, Ophelia sat on her couch, listening to a podcast while grading papers. Her dog stared hopefully at the door, waiting on the pizza man. She wasn’t surprised to hear a knock, since she’d gone to the trouble to order in, but she jumped at the sound regardless.

She pushed the wooden door open with one hand, holding her tip in the other, ready to give it to…that guy from the coffee shop. They stared at each other for a long moment. She was wearing a faded blue oxford shirt and boxer shorts, had at least three red pencils stuck in her hair, and was barefoot. He was wearing a purple Henley and jeans with boots and more than a little damp from trying to find her place in the rain. Sophie had dressed him in a lot of things for jobs he’d thought were dumb, but he’d never felt so inappropriate before. She hadn’t realized last week that he was barely taller than she was. Built like a brick wall, certainly, and good-looking in a rugged sort of way. Assuming, of course, that he wasn’t an axe murderer.

“Oh,” she finally said faintly. “I thought you were going to call.”

He belatedly thrust a bouquet of flowers at her. “I was in the neighborhood,” he explained untruthfully. “I thought I’d stop by. So, um, what are you up to tonight?”

She accepted the flowers reluctantly. They were pretty, but she couldn’t discount the idea this man might truly be a psycho, no matter how cute he was.

“I’m grading essays and waiting for pizza,” she said. “With my vicious attack dog.”

Nothing happened, although it was clear to him she expected a response.

“With my vicious attack dog,” she repeated, but louder. A German shepherd leaped off the chair by the window to come sit at her side. He studied Eliot intently for a moment before holding up one paw in the universal dog gesture for “shake”. Eliot knelt to scratch the dog’s ears and shake his paw respectfully.

“Who’s a good dog?” he asked, which made the dog flop down and roll over to expose his belly. Ophelia rolled her eyes.

“Devil! Get back in your chair!”

The dog trotted off happily after one final sniff at Eliot.

“You named your dog Devil?”

“After the Phantom’s dog,” she said, as if that explained everything. “Would you like to come in? You can wait for pizza with me. Read some essays if that’s what you’re into. Some of them are hilarious.”

Funny stuff, he knew, was good.

“Great! What are they about?”

“The Boston Massacre,” she answered as she disappeared into the kitchen. A scant few minutes later, she reappeared with the flowers in a vase, which she set on the table before resuming her place on the couch. “Have a seat,” she invited. “Be prepared to pay a lot of attention to the dog.”

“Are the essays supposed to be funny?”

“No. No they are not. But in addition to the American home front, I also must teach a freshman history class every semester. The students are random choice. I’m learning a lot of things I don’t need to about the Boston Celtics and Larry Bird.”

Military history was a thing Eliot knew, he thought. He didn’t bother to hide his confused look.

“Exactly,” she agreed.

The pizza guy’s timing couldn’t have been better, as far as Eliot was concerned. She hadn’t tossed him out, but she wasn’t, to use Sophie’s phrase, falling all over herself either. And she wasn’t playing hard to get, as far as he could tell. She wasn’t haughty and stand-offish like Sophie had coached Parker to be on some of their assignments. More than anything, she just seemed puzzled.

She set the pizza on the coffee table before turning to the dog.

“No.” Devil gave no sign he recognized the word, but he didn’t move.

“Would you like something to drink?” she asked. “Coke? Water?” She cast a glance over her shoulder. “Beer?”

“I don’t want to mess up your dinner,” he started.

“I’ve got plenty, and it’s bad for the dog. No matter what he tells you.”

“Is he likely to tell me he likes pizza?”

She didn’t answer, just glanced at the dog again before padding to the kitchen.

“Beer, if you have one,” he called.

The refrigerator door opened. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the dog slink off his chair and towards the pizza box.

“Dude,” he whispered hoarsely. The dog turned and slunk back to his chair, accepting that Eliot might be the alpha here.

“Is this okay? It’s what I have.” She held up a bottle apologetically, which was weird considering he was an uninvited guest eating her food and drinking her beer.

“It’s great,” he promised. “This will work great.” God, he hoped she hadn’t ordered pineapple with anchovies on the pizza. She passed him a plate and flipped open the top of the mercifully pineapple- and fish-less pizza.

“Go ahead,” she offered. Eliot picked up a slice of pizza and dropped it on her plate.

“Ladies first,” he said with a smile. She smiled back as she settled into a corner of the couch. It was a good defensive position, Eliot thought. If he’d been here to attack her, she was in a great place to kick him in the face before rolling over the arm to escape out the door. Settling back into his own corner close to the extremely large glass window overlooking the city, he realized none of that would ever occur to her.

“You don’t sound like you’re from around here,” he drawled, realizing she had asked if he wanted a Coke. That wasn’t a question people asked in Portland.

She quirked an eyebrow at him.

“Tell me about that, Texas,” she replied. He grinned in surrender. “I’m from Savannah, Georgia. My father is an art historian and my mother teaches British Literature. And unless you’re very, very confident that it’s an excellent one, I don’t like Hamlet jokes.”

Screw it, he’d ask Sophie later.

“You think you’re good at accents?” he challenged.

“Maybe. What is the town in that song…the Grateful Dead song,” she clarified. “The really long one. You know, ‘Out in the west Texas town of—”

“El Paso,” he supplied.

“No.”

“I’m sure it’s El Paso, and it’s a Marty Robbins song,” he blustered.

“No no, you’re right. It is El Paso, but no, you’re not from Texas.” She seemed confident.

“Go on,” he said.

“Oklahoma?” she ventured. “The west part. But you left young, fairly young, anyway, and you’ve traveled a lot. You’ve picked up a lot of languages, but you use that western accent when you think it gives you an advantage.”

“You’re a mind reader?”

“A party trick,” she replied. “You just have to not mind being wrong a lot. But after a while, you learn.”

“What did I have for breakfast?”

“Sorry, I don’t do dietary consultations. Or tarot readings. Or yoga instruction.”

“How did you get from Savannah to here? You wanted to see how far you could go and still be in the same country?”

“Oh, I’m sorry. You’re trying to unlock my tragic backstory, and neither of us has had quite enough to drink to get into that tonight.”

He wasted a moment wondering just how tragic it was. She watched him for a moment before apparently coming to a decision.

“It’s the same old story,” she said. “Girl meets boy, girl dates boy, girl and boy have a wild breakup and agree that they’ll stay on opposite sides of the continent from now on. It happens.”

“Did this happen recently?”

She shrugged. “Not really. I haven’t seen him in maybe five years now. I mean, it was rough for a while, but you can’t win ‘em all.”

You can’t, he agreed, although you could certainly break every bone in the man’s body.

“So,” she changed the subject. “How did you get into the retrieval business? Do you come from a long and ancient line of retrievers, destined to walk the earth finding things that are lost?”

He chuckled at that.

“It’s just a temporary thing,” he said.

“Until your ship comes in? I wouldn’t have taken you for a sailor.”

“Not a sailor,” he answered. “More of a horse kinda guy. I’m putting money back for my own restaurant someday.”

“Oh! You’re a chef?” Finally, something had caught her interest.

“Yeah. I trained in Belgium,” he answered with pride.

“What kind of restaurant? What will your specialty dish be?”

“You,” he blurted. He heard the echo of it around the room. Even the dog seemed to look at him with pity.

“It’s, um, very…progressive in this day and age to take the preferences of cannibals into consideration,” she stammered, suddenly extremely concerned for how the unexpectedly strange evening was going. She dropped her second piece of pizza onto the plate with a clatter. “I guess?”

“I mean,” he hurried to clarify, “whatever you’d like to eat. You know, as a guest.”

“Italian?” she ventured. “Asian? French?”

“I think it would depend on the night,” he said. “I’d have different specialties every night.”

She nodded slowly.

“What would you do?” he asked.

“With what?

“Like, if you won the lottery, and money was no object. What would you do?”

She didn’t even hesitate.

“Move to Santa Fe and buy an art gallery,” she said decisively.

“You’re an artist? Did you do any of these?” The art on her walls, while plentiful, was not the sort of art he usually saw. For one thing, probably none of it was stolen, probably none of it was forged, and probably none of it was worth $100 Million dollars at auction.

“Oh no, I’m not an artist. I’m just an art appreciator. I would represent people nobody knows yet. And spend half my time walking up and down Canyon Road looking at what everyone else has and spending too much on it.”

He couldn’t argue that philanthropy was a bad life goal. Or that art acquisition was a bad use of time, especially the way she planned to do it. He was vaguely glad that she hadn’t started gushing about Paris in the rain, although he suspected she would enjoy Paris a great deal.

“Do you like museums and art galleries and stuff like that?” asked the man who had rarely seen one that was open while he was in it.

“Sure.”

“How would you like to go see one tomorrow? I have a friend with a private gallery that’s not usually open to the public. She’s having a limited show this weekend.” It was going to be really, really limited, especially if Sophie didn’t go for it.

“Is she a cannibal?”

Fair play, Eliot thought.

“Not anymore. So, I’ll pick you up at 7? Would that work? We could see my friend’s gallery and then go to dinner at a place that doesn’t serve gallbladders.”

Recognizing that she had not agreed to go per se, she nodded.

Eliot congratulated himself on the win. He didn’t even feel bad about leaving before 10 without even the hint she might like to kiss him.

She bolted the door behind him, resting her forehead against it for a minute. Devil, who had followed her to see their guest out, leaned against her sympathetically.

“No, I have no idea what that was about,” she told him.

“You want me to what?” Sophie asked, incredulous.

“Come on, Soph. It’s not like you don’t have a ton of it. Just let me hang some up in that warehouse and pretend it’s some artsy-fartsy gallery. She’s into art.”

“You want to bring a near-total stranger into one of our buildings and show her my art collection?” Sophie repeated, just to be sure she had the high points.

“We bring strangers in all the time,” Eliot argued. “And it’s not like she’s going to steal it.”

“Are you—”

He plunked Hardison’s folder down in front of her. There was no need to flip through all those pages.

“All right, I will give you that she’s probably not a criminal, but you’ve known her, what? Half an hour? You’ve had coffee and pizza with her and you threatened to eat her. This is not the start of a successful relationship, Eliot. Even the kind of relationships you have.”

He thought for a moment, stewing over what she’d said.

“What if I owed you a favor?”

“Any time?”

“Any time,” he sighed. “But I get to pick the pictures and where they are.”

“Oh, I can’t wait to see this,” Sophie chortled. He’d never actually heard anyone chortle before.

Later that morning, when he had chosen and moved 27 paintings he thought she’d like to see, Parker asked the burning question.

“Since we’re giving up our Saturday to make a fake gallery, do we get to come too?”

“Come where?” Eliot asked, levering a painting into position.

“To your date,” Parker answered, annoyed. He should have known. That was all they’d been talking about all day.

“No, Parker, you can’t come on my date.”

“But we want to see her! And if we see her we can check her out. Make sure she’s not crazy or something.”

“Hardison! Do you have some algorithm thing for the order she’d like to see these?” He decided not to ask how Parker would know whether or not she was crazy.

“Come on, Eliot. Please? I’d let you come on one of my dates.”

“Not tonight, Parker, okay? If we have a second date, maybe we can talk about it then, okay? And you better not scratch that frame hanging upside down like that. Sophie will set me on fire.”

“Look, man,” Hardison said, holding his laptop so Eliot could see it, “these are all paintings or artists she likes. I cannot find the shortcut into her pants from her social media, although I probably wouldn’t start with wine. According to her ‘face page’,” again with the air quotes, “she’s not a wine drinker. Doesn’t like the taste.”

“I’m not trying…I’m not just trying to get into her pants. No wine at all?”

“Not reds, anyway.”

“I bet she likes champagne,” Parker offered. “Most girls like champagne.”

“Because of the bubbles?” Eliot grumbled.

“Because it seems like you’re sophisticated, which she won’t be expecting since you’re so rugged. What’s she wearing?”

“Why would I know that?”

“I mean, did you tell her this was a fancy place or what?”

Eliot stared between them for a moment.

“I better check,” he admitted.

<Maybe: Eliot Spencer> We’re still on for 7, right?

<Ophelia M>: We are. Is your friend’s gallery party formal?

“Is it formal?” he asked Parker. Being the only girl in the room, she was the only option he had for questions. Calling Sophie with that question would just get him an earful about clothes and dates and plans and women that he just didn’t have time for right now. Especially if Parker decided it was formal.

“No,” she decided, still hanging upside down, which could not be healthy. “Too much pressure on a first date. Plus formal dresses are uncomfortable and she’ll be all itchy and hate you.”

“Itchy?”

“Trust me.”

<Maybe: Eliot Spencer>: It’s not formal. See you at 7!

Well, she thought. That didn’t answer any of her questions at all.

She stood in front of the closet and dithered. What to wear to a gallery that wasn’t formal, and then to dinner at an unknown restaurant. With a man she barely knew, who wasn’t from Texas, and who hadn’t denied being from Oklahoma, although he hadn’t really confirmed it either.

“What do you think?” she asked Devil. The dog thumped his tail on the bed and smiled, glad to be included in the conversation. He was never a ton of help with her wardrobe, but she assured him he more than made up for it in other ways.

Portland didn’t get what someone from Georgia might call hot, even in the middle of summer. Sure, the people who had always lived there thought it was hot; Ophelia just thought it was pleasant, if not a little damp. After a very great deal of thought, she settled on an olive green dress that wasn’t too long or too short and a pair of brown peep-toe pumps that looked vintage but were not. Over the top of it all, she pulled on a sweater she’d bought at a street fair. It was comfortable, sparkly, and had pockets, all of which was hard to beat. She guessed.

Her knees nearly went weak with relief when she opened the door promptly at 7 to find Eliot on the other side, wearing a blazer and jeans.

“Oh, thank goodness,” she said. He was immediately concerned.

“Is something wrong?”

“I was afraid I’d be terribly over-dressed and embarrass you in front of your friend,” she admitted. “But it looks like I guessed right.”

“You look great,” he said, because she did. “Ready to go?”

“I am,” she said, reaching over to grab her bag. Turning to the dog, who was at her feet, she said “You’re in charge.”

She slipped out the door past him; he stuck his head back in. “Watch the place, dude.”

The dog gave a sharp bark of agreement.

“Is this your car?” He walked around to open the passenger side door for her.

“You don’t like it?” The orange Challenger was usually a head-turner.

“I love it! What’ll it do?”

“Oh, you know,” he scoffed. “Depends on the day.”

“I had a friend who had one,” she said as he held the door for her. “We found that it could easily do 70 in a 55.”

“Yup, that’ll do it,” he agreed. “Maybe we can go racing sometimes?”

“I’ve got a jeep, but I do like to go watch the drag races.”

He reminded himself that no good was likely to come from pointing out that her not-standard-color green Jeep had much more of an engine in it than it should have, nor that the sheer number of times she’d been pulled over would make a regular insurance adjuster faint. That could definitely wait until later.

He wasn’t prepared to see Sophie’s car in the lot when they pulled up. He wasn’t prepared for the other eighteen cars in the lot either, but tried to hide his surprise.

“The Deveraux Collection,” she read off the door from a sign that definitely hadn’t been there when he left. “You know the curator?”

“I…um…retrieved some art for her,” he said, although they both would have agreed that his tone held a distinct question.

A man he’d never seen before was at the podium that wasn’t installed the last time he’d been in here. Four hours ago.

“Name?”

This had to be one of Sophie’s acting students trying for a supercilious tone and not succeeding.

“Eliot Spencer,” he said. The man looked, not subtly, at his plus one. “And Ophelia Mason.”

“Delighted to see you, Mr. Spencer, Ms. Mason. Please let me know if you—should you have any questions.” He handed them each a program listing the works and their artists.

He wasn’t sure Ophelia had blinked since they’d opened the door to the gallery. To Sophie’s credit, the place had been transformed into something not quite industrial glam, but certainly not the warehouse chic aesthetic he’d last seen this morning. And she’d rearranged all of their hard work. Which, fine. They’d talk about it later.

“Oh, my,” Ophelia breathed quietly. “This is…amazing.”

“You like it?”

“I’ve never seen an actual Klimt,” she admitted. “I…I don’t know what to say.”

They wandered, discussing the paintings. Eliot had been concerned that she would focus on technical things like brushstrokes and types of paint and what the paint was made of and things people talked about that didn’t really matter unless you were trying to verify that you stole the real thing. Fortunately, she just seemed very taken with the fact of the art itself, but proved knowledgeable about many of the artists and their other works. Her enthusiasm was cute.

“Is that your friend?” she asked shyly, indicating the woman in question with a tilt of her head that the door man could have taken notes on. And should have, if he planned to continue acting.

“Yeah, that’s her. Sophie Deveraux. You want to meet her?”

“I mean, I don’t want to bother her,” she stammered. The woman, chatting with a group of people at the end of the room, looked extremely glamorous.

“It won’t be a bother,” Eliot assured her, offering his elbow. Sophie definitely wouldn’t mind, and in fact might cause a scene if he went too much longer without introducing his date. Since she’d gone to all of this trouble to rearrange everything and then show up here looking like…that, she clearly intended to to introduced. At this point, his only hope was that Parker wasn’t still hanging around in the rafters like a demented bat.

The crowd parted before them as they approached. Eliot knew a rehearsed scene when he saw one; no group of people all had somewhere else to be at the same time, and none of them backed away like they were leaving an audience with the queen. All the same, he knew that Sophie saw herself as the queen in this situation. It just remained to be seen whether or not he was the fool.

“Eliot!” she greeted him fondly, kissing both of his cheeks. “I hoped you would be able to attend tonight! And who is your lovely friend?”

“Sophie Deveraux, please meet Ophelia Mason,” he said. Sophie brushed past him to embrace Ophelia, who was caught completely off guard by the gesture. He hoped Sophie wasn’t patting her down for weapons.

“My dear!” she cried, with a look for Eliot, who nodded his understanding. He could have told Sophie his date wasn’t armed.

“It’s lovely to meet you, Ms. Deveraux,” Ophelia said. “Your collection is magnificent.”

“Just bits and bobs I’ve collected over the course of my life,” she preened, pretending at old age. “Eliot is such a dear to bring you out tonight. I was afraid he’d miss the entire exhibit, and we’re such good friends.”

“She’s like a sister to me,” he said, rolling his eyes behind Ophelia’s back. “I’ve had to retrieve some things for her before.”

“He’s so modest,” Sophie gushed, making Eliot turn red to the tips of his ears. “My darling, he has saved me more than once. But listen to me, prattling on. Are you an art aficionado my dear? Or are you an artist yourself?”

“I’m just a writer,” Ophelia confessed. “But my father is an art historian, so I know a little.” She glanced over Sophie’s shoulder. “Is that a real Mettier?!”

Sophie snaked her arm through Ophelia’s, gesturing ‘shoo’ at Eliot, barely raising her voice when she instructed him to bring them some champagne.

“What a good eye you have,” Sophie beamed, leading her to a painting that might or might not have been the real thing. The details on that had been fuzzy at best, and Eliot had only chosen that one because he suspected it might not be real, and that Sophie might not be as mad if something happened to it. He knew she had at least one real one, that this wasn’t it, and that the subject of it wasn’t up for discussion at all.

Sophie was deep, really deep, into a discussion of the motivation behind the painting when Eliot returned with two glasses of champagne. She nodded in approval when Ophelia asked whether he was drinking.

“Driving,” he reminded her. “Safety first.”

Almost, Sophie laughed out loud. Instead she turned back to the starlet for the evening. “But you’ve told me almost nothing of yourself? You’re from the South.”

“Georgia,”Ophelia affirmed. “And if I may, Devonshire? Do you miss it?”

“Every day! How did you know that?”

“Party trick,” Ophelia shrugged. “I tried it on him too, but you really can’t hide the Oklahoma. You meet a surprising number of people when your parents are in the arts. The accents at a party can sound like ‘it’s a small world’.”

Sophie and Eliot exchanged a glance; hers was very carefully blank. They could still end up burned, even if this wasn’t a con.

“And I suppose one hears more Hamlet jokes than one cares to admit,” Sophie ventured.

“All of them,” Ophelia confirmed.

Eliot stood, perplexed.

“You seem so familiar,” Ophelia mused. “Have I seen you before?”

“Well,” Sophie could blush on command. “I am a bit in the theatre scene here.”

“Oh! You were Lady Macbeth! I saw you!” Ophelia suddenly remembered. It was the absolute worst performance she’d ever seen.

“Did you, dear? How did you like it?” Eliot had to hand it to her; asking a stranger for a review of her performance was one of the bravest things he’d seen her do.

It had been one the of the most painful things Ophelia had ever experienced. To her credit, she didn’t even flash a glance at Eliot before she answered, “I just don’t have the words to describe it. Memorable. Devastating.”

Oddly enough, Eliot thought those were the exact words the blistering reviews had used of that performance, but Ophelia was selling them like a champ. Sophie stared rapturously at her; she always enjoyed a glowing review.

“We don’t want to keep you,” he said before she could ask any follow-up questions. “And we have dinner reservations in 45 minutes.”

“It was such an honor to meet you,” Ophelia said. “Thank you so much for the tour.”

“It was my pleasure,” Sophie assured her, and Eliot thought she might mean it. “We should meet for lunch some time, if you’re available.”

“I would love that,” Ophelia promised.

Eliot reached for her hand, somewhat surprised when she grasped it. He would have said her gesture was warm, even.

“Good night Sophie,” he said. “I owe you one.”

She smiled politely, with only the tips of her teeth showing. Oh, he was definitely going to owe her one, although the girl was different from the type he usually favored and seemed quite charming. Actually charming, Sophie amended silently. Not charming in the sense she usually used, which meant all of his date’s tattoos were spelled correctly.

“I never did ask where we’re going for dinner,” she said, pulling her seatbelt across.

“I probably should have asked if you like steak,” he admitted, pulling out slower than usual because he was certain Sophie was listening for the car. “Do you?”

“I do,” she answered. “Excellent choice.”

“Really?” She was wearing a dress and heels, he thought. Surely she realized this was a date.

“Yes, really,” she laughed. “Do the other women you’re dating generally lie about what they like to eat?”

The question had honestly come out before she could stop it. He smiled to himself and felt generous enough to ignore it.

“I mean, sometimes. If I had said pasta, would you have reacted the same way?”

“I absolutely would have. I love pasta. And breadsticks.”

“Italian?”

“I understand that American Italian and Italian Italian are different, if that’s what you’re asking. And I like both.”

“You’re not just being nice?”

“I’m not that nice,” she promised. “I would have been much less enthusiastic about fish. Or sushi.”

“Seafood?”

“Seafood’s fine. I’m just not a fish fan. Raw, fried, or otherwise.”

“Oysters are seafood,” he pointed out. This drive was proving much more entertaining than he had hoped it would be. In her defense, most women were not this open about what they preferred to eat, and every woman he’d dated recently would have eaten a tablecloth before she would have willingly eaten carbs.

“It’ll be approximately three more drinks before I can give you my unfiltered opinion of oysters,” she answered. “But I’m not a fan. If you want a sneak peek.”

He settled more comfortably into the seat.

“What do you think of ribs?”

The steakhouse he had chosen was not in the tourist district, and didn’t have a flashy sign or, mercifully, an all-you-can-eat option.

“An ex-service buddy of mine owns part of this,” he explained as he held the door for her. “He supplies some of the meat and some of the vegetables.”

“So he’s met the meat?” she asked quietly. It sounded like she was making a joke, but he didn’t get it. The tables were few but posh, with fancy china and real silver. The atmosphere was quiet, and there was a lit fireplace in the corner. The host led them to an out-of-the way table by a window with a view of the park. “Does he work here?”

Eliot texted the “met the meat” comment to Hardison as discreetly as he could. The answering text seemed to contain a lot of exclamation points, which was probably not a good sign for him.

“No, he’s usually here during the day. He doesn’t cook; he just supplies.”

There was already a bottle of champagne on the table.

“I hope you don’t mind,” he said.

“You don’t expect me to drink that myself, right?” He thought her eyes twinkled when she asked.

“I don’t, but if you feel like that’s something you want to do, I won’t stop you either.”

“You don’t know,” she teased. “I might be a fighting drunk.”

Eliot was rarely at a loss for words, but he didn’t have a good comeback that wouldn’t wind up with him getting slapped, and not in a fun way.

“A good fight could be fun.”

She smiled at the host when he offered her a menu, flipping casually through a few pages while he recited the specials, assured them someone would handle their every need soon, poured them both a glass of champagne, then departed.

When she was certain nobody was about to arrive at their table to offer them something, she handed Eliot the menu across the table. He stared at her outstretched hand with the folder in it.

“You pick.”

It sounded like a challenge. He had no idea how to proceed.

“Me?”

“You.”

“But—”

“You know what’s good here,” she said, not quite hiding her smile. “So order for me. Please.”

That was definitely a command and not a request.

He leaned forward. “Look, I’m not a college student. If you’re worried about money, or whether, you know…I mean, I know what it costs to eat here. A dinner out isn’t a deal breaker. I don’t expect–”

She gave a low but amused chuckle.

“That’s interesting, but not my point. You’ve had the advantage the entire time I’ve known you. I’m inviting you to use it.”

She sipped champagne from her glass as if they were having a perfectly normal conversation, while he started to sweat under his collar. He had faced down dictators, for god’s sake. A college history professor, even in high heels, should have been a cake walk. She should have been the one who was confused and off…

Too late, he realized she was, and had been for a while, and had not exactly enjoyed the sensation. He did have the advantage. She had just non-violently seized it for hers. In his vernacular, she had thrown a knockout punch.

“Dessert too?”

“You better believe it.”

He smiled back, then collected both menus.

“I’ll be right back,” he promised.

He tracked down their waiter, gave the kid an extremely detailed order, then called Hardison.

“Meet the meat?” Eliot demanded.

“She said that? Like, herself?”

“I need to know if it was a joke, Hardison. Soon. I haven’t got a lot of time here.”

“It’s from a book,” he said. “And it’ll take too long to explain and she’ll know you didn’t get it. Are you sure me and Parker can’t come meet you for dinner? Because it sounds like you need help my man.”

“I do not need help with a date,” Eliot growled. Pushing a button to end a call wasn’t nearly as satisfying as slamming the phone shut.

He sat down and leaned back in his chair, reaching for his own glass.

“Done.”

“What do you mean, done?”

“I ordered. For both of us.”

“You cheated!”

“You didn’t set the rules,” he reminded her. “Refill?”

He waited for her nod.

“You have questions,” he said. “Ask them. I’ll try to answer.”

“You don’t have any?”

“One. Are you seeing anyone else?”

“Why do I think if I say yes, you will hunt down that person and they’ll end up with no pants in a foreign country.” He had underestimated her, because that was pretty close to what he had planned to do.

“I wouldn’t take their pants.”

“I’m not seeing anyone. Are you?”

“No one.”

“Really.” Skepticism.

“Nobody seriously, and nobody in town.”

“If you leave town will you see them again?”

“No.” Honesty.

“Are you married?”

“Is that different from seeing someone?”

“It very much is.”

“Would you believe to the US Constitution?”

“Sure, but that doesn’t preclude being married to a real person. I’m not interested in whatever relationship happens between you and a consenting document.”

“I’m not married. I never have been.”

“Are you a hit man?”

It was such an abrupt change in the line of questioning he thought he might develop whiplash.

“No?”

“Are you asking me? Or telling me?”

“I’m…I’m…,” he floundered for an honest answer that wouldn’t scare the shit out of her.

“Let’s come at it from another direction,” she decided. “You were in the service?”

“Army,” he confirmed. “If you’re asking have I—”

“That’s not what I’m asking,” she interrupted, but gently. “I just need to know you don’t make your living killing people.”

“You don’t believe I’m a retrieval specialist?”

“I absolutely do. But I need to make sure what you’re retrieving isn’t the still-beating heart of your enemy.”

She saw the waiter before he did, and readjusted the napkin in her lap as the plates were set before them. Her transition from interrogator to girl on a date was so abrupt and convincing he fleetingly wondered if Hardison had found the wrong girl after all.

“Anything else,” the waiter asked into the obvious silence.

“I think we’re good here,” she answered with a dazzling smile. Eliot glared at the waiter in a way that made him sprint for the kitchen. Ophelia didn’t turn her attention away from Eliot, but she got the feeling the waiter hurdled a table.

“I’m not saying I have,” Eliot started carefully. “But if I have killed anyone, it was because they were terrible people.”

“Are you carrying a gun right now?”

“You don’t have anything to say about what’s on your plate?”

“It looks delicious and I’m starving. Well done.”

“Medium rare.”

She actually laughed at that, which made him smile.

“No, seriously. Do you have a gun with you now.” Insistent.

“I hate guns,” he said, looking her square in the eye. “I know how to use them, but I don’t like them and I don’t carry one. I don’t have one now.”

“Do you have one in the car?”

Damn. Now she not only had his attention, but his concern.

“Did someone pull a gun on you in a car? On a date?” He was outraged.

“Yes,” she said briefly, “and I don’t want to talk about it.”

He reached across the table for her hand and tried to catch her eye, but she couldn’t quite meet his gaze.

“I don’t know what to say to that, except that I’ve never pulled a gun on a woman I was dating, and can’t imagine why I would. But if you tell me who it was, I will drag him to a foreign country and take his pants.” That wasn’t all, but it was at least her language.

She looked up before looking at him again.

“Not necessary,” she said. “But thank you.”

“If your next question is whether someone sent me to kill you, they didn’t but we’re going to have a much longer talk.”

“That wasn’t even on my list of questions,” she assured him.

“Good. Then I have one.”

She sliced into her steak with a fork before gesturing he should continue.

“Do you like sports?”

She chewed slowly both to hide her absolute confusion and to savor the taste of the steak.

“Some. Can you elaborate, please?”

“Football?”

“Of course.”

“Hockey?”

“Love it.”

“Really?”

“Some other time I’ll tell you about the team we used to go watch. But I have to warn you that I like minor league hockey much better than the NHL.”

“The team here is definitely minor league.”

“Perfect.”

He braced himself for the next question.

“Baseball?”

“Hard pass.”

“Because the defense can’t score, right?”

“And it’s phenomenally boring.”

“Chess?”

“You mean the board game?”

They ate for a few moments in silence, enjoying the meal. He was enjoying her company, and she at least appeared to be enjoying his.

“You like it?” he asked, gesturing to her nearly empty plate.

“What there was of it,” she returned with a wink.

“Yeah, just wait for dessert.”

“Don’t threaten me with a good time.”

They were halfway through a fresh peach cobbler when he decided to address the elephant.

“So, here’s the thing,” he started. “I travel for work a lot. Like, a whole lot. And usually for a couple of weeks at the time.”

She watched him carefully for a moment, just to make sure he wasn’t about to launch into an explanation about why having twenty girlfriends was perfectly normal in some countries.

“And you want to make sure I’m not going to call and complain that you’re not here to fix the water heater while you’re gone,” she finished for him.

“I’m not what you’d probably call a good guy. But I don’t cheat and I don’t lie.”

“I can fix the water heater myself. I have been for years. And I know how to entertain myself.”

“You’re trying to make it sound like you don’t need anyone else,” he translated. “I don’t want to have that discussion on our first date. And I want to be absolutely sure you think this is a date.”

“The menu didn’t have prices on it; what else could it be?”

“Are you like this all the time?”

“Usually it’s much, much worse,” she promised.

“I like a challenge. I have to warn you: I’m not a professor—”

“Let me just stop you there,” she said, pinning his fork down with hers. “Have you ever dated a professor? Because they’re generally not just a barrel of laughs. And I’m not going to tell you my age, but I can assure you I’m on the young end of my profession. I get called ‘whipper-snapper’ a lot. What I think you’re trying to say is that you’re not a nuclear physicist, but most of those guys aren’t a ton of fun either. But I suspect you’re smart in a lot of ways I’d never think about, especially since you found my house with only my name. So can we agree that if we’re going to do this, we can do it without ‘the smart one’ being a thing?”

“So you definitely want to date then,” he surmised. “Date me. To be clear.”

“Have you seen yourself?”

It was no sacrifice on his part to offer her the last forkful of dessert. She’d earned it.

Sophie was editing another script, red pen in one hand and coffee cup in the other. At least she was smiling this time.

He cleared his throat to get her attention.

“Go on.”

“I’m…I’m in over my head, Soph.”

“I’m not sure what’s funnier,” she replied. “The fact that you recognize it, or the fact that you’re coming to me with it.”

He waited.

“Because I realized you were in over your head the second I saw her.”

“How could you possibly have known from all the way across a warehouse?”

Sophie sighed as she pushed her script away, but drank deeply from the coffee mug before she continued.

“Her shoes, Eliot. I saw her shoes.”

“So? They were, what, brown ones?”

Sophie stuck one foot up in the air.

“You see these? These are stiletto heels. I wear them every day. I knew you were getting more than you bargained for when I turned around and saw that she was wearing low heels so she wouldn’t be taller than you.”

“I don’t…I don’t care about something like that,” he said defensively. He didn’t care, but he was mad that he hadn’t noticed it either.

“She literally sized you up and evened the playing field the only way she could. She put herself on a level where she could look you right in the eye. Not up at you. Not down on you. Face it, boy: you’re screwed.”

“I…”

“And another thing,” Sophie went on. Now that she’d warmed to the subject, she had a great deal to say. “That entire outfit. You just looked at her and thought she was pretty. But her hair pin, her earrings, her purse, and her shoe clips were all shaped like leaves, Eliot.”

“Is that supposed to mean something?”

“Probably, but on another level, she was trying to give the appearance that she’d thrown an outfit together, but that outfit actually took a lot of planning. The sparkles on her sweater were the same color as the leaves on her earrings. That kind of coordination can take weeks, and she pulled it together in a matter of hours! She wanted to impress you and your ‘friend’,” great, now she was doing the air quotes too, “by looking nice, but in doing so she looked so nice that she tipped her hand. Not only are you in over your head, but she’s holding the only life preserver!”

Yes, he thought. That was an excellent summation of the situation.

“But you didn’t notice any of that, so what was it, exactly?”

To Sophie’s surprise, Eliot blushed. She wasn’t sure he ever had before, and certainly not in front of her over a girl.

“She…um…she made me order dinner.”

“Is that a metaphor?”

“No, Sophie. It’s a thing. She handed me the menu without looking at it first and asked me to order for her. Didn’t tell me what she wanted, just said do it. And then she said please.”

It was clear he was infuriated about this, but also intrigued.

“So. You’ve met your match, then.”

“What do I do?”

“I think it’s time I met her too.”