“His ‘vision’ makes him tricky to deal with.”
“That’s probably what England thought about Washington, Jefferson, and the others.”
Coyne looked suddenly approving. “You really are a patriot, aren’t you, Major August?”
Matt frowned. “I’m practical.”
“Yes, they say that about you, too. You make pragmatic decisions in the field. You do what has to be done. How about here in Dallas, Matt? Are you practical in this environment?”
“When necessary.”
“You seem to be setting out on a new course in your life.” Coyne indicated the sleek, modern apartment with a nod of his head. “Or is this a temporary arrangement?”
Matt took another sip of beer and faced his future. “No, it’s not temporary. Not if I can help it.”
Coyne’s fingers drummed a few beats on the leather briefcase. “Will you need money in this new arrangement?” he asked delicately.
Matt took his time answering. “I’ll need more than twenty-five thousand for this new lifestyle,” he finally said slowly.
Coyne’s eyes narrowed. “You know as well as I do that there are ceilings on what I can pay outside help.”
“Ah, yes, budgetary considerations.” Matt nodded. “I understand your position, Coyne. But I’m afraid the government is going to find me a tad more expensive now than they did when I worked for a major’s salary.” He would keep this strictly on a financial level, Matt promised himself. He would make all his decisions for practical reasons.
“There’s more than money involved here,” Coyne observed.
“Not for me, there isn’t.”
“Your government needs you, Major August.”
“My government should have considered that possibility when they screwed me two years ago.”
“What about you, Matt? Don’t you need more than money out of this? If you are successful on this mission, I’m sure I will be able to offer others. There is a chance to build a more or less permanent association between us. A working relationship that could endure for some time.”
“Until I get killed, for example.”
Coyne waited, drinking the last of his orange juice and looking around for somewhere to set the glass. He chose one of Brad’s soldier-of-fortune-style magazines that were lying on the black lacquer coffee table. Coyne pursed his mouth thoughtfully as he gazed down at the cover.
“Are any of the ludicrous ads in this magazine offering more than what I’m offering?” Coyne demanded.
Matt glanced at Brad’s magazine. “The going rate seems to be in the neighborhood of fifty thousand.” He hoped Coyne would not pick up the thing and glance at the ads. Matt had no idea what kind of money, if any, was actually being offered to would-be mercenaries these days.
“Fifty thousand!” The little man looked mortally stricken.
“I thought it sounded like a nice, round number.”
“That’s ridiculous!”
“Oh, come on, Coyne. We send millions into a country we’re interested in saving from communism. All I’m asking is fifty grand. You know as well as I do you’re more likely to get your money’s worth out of me than you are by handing it over to one of our so-called friends in that part of the world.”
Coyne looked affronted, but he didn’t disagree. “Forty thousand. That is absolutely as high as I have been authorized to go on this mission.”
“You work for a cheap, penny-pinching outfit, Coyne.”
“We have a duty to spend taxpayer dollars wisely.”
Matt’s smile was grim. “You may rest assured that any tax dollars I take from you will go to a worthy cause.”
“May I assume we have a deal?”
“I’ll let you know tomorrow.”
“Why not now?”
“Because now my lady is coming home from a hard day’s work and I haven’t even slipped into my Saran Wrap outfit, let alone chilled her favorite wine. You’ll have to excuse me. Duty calls.”
Matt got to his feet as, with the usual flourish, Sabrina’s Alfa Romeo pulled into one of the parking spaces in front of the apartment.
“Are you sure you haven’t made up your mind already, Major?” Coyne obediently rose and started toward the door.
“I told you. I’ll let you know tomorrow.” Matt opened the door for Sabrina, who was striding up the walk, her red leather purse slung over her shoulder. She was wearing white jeans and the fake silver necklace. She smiled brilliantly when she saw him standing in the doorway, and then she caught sight of Rafferty Coyne.
“Hello,” she said politely, surprised to see a stranger in her house. “Friend of Matt’s?”
“He’s pushing door-to-door cosmetics and he’s just leaving,” Matt explained.
“I see.” Sabrina stood aside on the walk as the visitor bustled past her with a distant, polite nod. She turned to Matt. “You’re not buying?”
“I’m considering the offer. Come on inside, Sabrina. I’ll get you your wine.”
Sabrina followed. Matt had been living with her for only a short time, but she was rapidly learning to recognize his moods.
“I don’t think I like him.” Placing her purse on the counter, Sabrina sat on a stool to unfasten her high-heeled sandals. She watched as Matt opened the refrigerator and removed a bottle of very cold
Chenin
Blanc. He had lied to Coyne. He was very careful about keeping a bottle of Sabrina’s favorite wine properly chilled.
“Don’t feel bad. I don’t think anyone actually likes Rafferty Coyne.”
“Who is he?” She kicked the shoes under the stool and reached out to take the wine from him. The evening routine was becoming comfortable and familiar, she realized vaguely. She had been wondering how long Matt would be content with it.
“A man with an offer of a job.” Matt popped the top on another can of beer. “I’ll tell you about it later.”
Which meant in bed so that Brad wouldn’t overhear. “That bad, huh?”
“It’s a lot of money, Sabrina. And I could use the infusion of capital.”
“Why is he willing to pay you all that money, and just how much is it, anyway?”
“Later, Sabrina. Here comes Brad.”
Sabrina stifled her impatience as the boy came across the patio and through the back door. Having a kid in the house definitely hampered communication at times. But she was learning to adjust, and so, surprisingly, was Brad. They had reached a sort of truce after that afternoon on the patio when she had interrupted the knife-throwing session. Perhaps because a tentative give-and-take had been established with his father or perhaps because Brad was slowly beginning to believe that Sabrina wasn’t going to separate him from his parent, he seemed willing to tolerate her presence. Nice of him, Sabrina sometimes thought, considering it was, after all, her home.
Watching him come through the back door, dripping water on the floor, a towel slung around his neck, she suddenly realized that he was going to look a lot like his father in another few years. He would grow into those large hands and feet and outgrow the awkwardness of an adolescent male body. Idly she wondered if her new nephew would grow up looking like Nolan.
“Hi, Brad.”
“ ‘Lo, Sabrina. Bring home the chili you promised?”
“I’ve got it. Genuine Instant Texas Panhandle Chili. Direct to you from New Jersey. Did you think I’d forget?”
He shook his head, spattering water like a dog. “No, it’s just that I—”
“For Pete’s sake, Brad, go back out on the patio until you dry off,” Matt ordered mildly.
“Okay, okay.
Sheesh
. What a grouch.” But Brad stepped back outside and quickly dried himself. It didn’t take long in the late-afternoon heat.
“So why were you worried about the chili?” Sabrina called through the screen door.
“Well, there’s this girl. She’s new here and I was
sorta
thinking about asking her if she wants to eat with us. Is that okay?”
Sabrina blinked. “Sure.”
“Thanks.” Brad sounded almost grateful. “I’ll go tell her it’s all set. Be right back.” He dashed off in the direction of a young girl wearing a bikini, who was trying to look terribly unconcerned and aloof as she sat by the pool.
“Christ.” Matt shook his head. “The kid’s turning into a fast mover.”
“Like his father.”
Matt eyed her thoughtfully. “This has been a little rough on you, hasn’t it? Me landing on your doorstep with a kid in tow.”
“It’s been a change, that’s for sure.” She grinned, wondering at the seriousness behind his words. “But I think Brad and I are showing a high tolerance level for each other.”
“How high exactly is your tolerance level, Sabrina?” Matt downed a long swallow of beer, planting himself in the middle of the kitchen floor as if he were getting ready to do battle.
Instantly wary, Sabrina paused before answering. “Why do you ask? Planning a little test?”
“Could you handle him alone, by yourself, for a month?”
“What?” Dumbfounded, she stared at him.
Matt said something under his breath, something aimed at himself. “Forget it. I’ll talk to you later.”
“I get the feeling I may not want to hear this fascinating bedtime conversation you’re planning. This has something to do with that little twerp with the briefcase, doesn’t it?”
Matt peered attentively out through the screen door. “Brad’s coming back. Grinning like a fool. I guess the girl accepted the hot date.” He seemed relieved at the interruption.
“Matt, I want some answers.”
He sighed. “Later.”
“I had no idea,” Sabrina muttered several hours later as she emerged from the bathroom into the adjoining bedroom, “how painful it is to watch young love in bloom.” She knotted the sash of her yellow terrycloth robe and flopped down into a chair. “Poor little things, they don’t even know how to make conversation at that age, do they? Or maybe it’s just that they have trouble making conversation in front of us adults.” She recalled Brad’s alternating awkwardness and excitement as he had tried to entertain his young acquaintance over Instant Genuine Texas Panhandle Chili. Cindy Tyler, also thirteen and equally ill at ease in front of grown-ups, had gone through long stretches of silence broken by moments of stark politeness as she asked for catsup or potato chips. The two had found a common bond in a television show after dinner and then Cindy had said she had to go home. Brad had gallantly walked her back across the lawn that separated the apartment buildings. He had returned in less than ten minutes.
“Don’t you remember what it was like?” Matt lazily stripped off his shirt and dropped it into the dirty-clothes hamper he had insisted Sabrina buy.
“To tell you the truth, no. My father let me do very little socializing at thirteen.” She found it interesting that Matt had objected to tossing his dirty clothes into a corner of the closet until he had enough for a wash. Sabrina wasn’t sure she liked having a hamper invade her room after all these years of being free of one, but so far she tolerated it because Matt was doing the laundry. “Even when I was older my social life was severely inhibited by the fact that I was a banker’s daughter and I had two very large, overly protective brothers. My real problem was finding dates who had enough guts to brave the gauntlet my family insisted on putting each one of them through.”
“Sheltered, huh? I can understand it. If I had a teenage daughter instead of Brad, I would have been pacing the floor during the ten minutes he was outside alone tonight.”
“My father and brothers carried everything to extremes when it came to raising me. I tried to explain to them that I wasn’t exactly a femme fatale at thirteen, but they wouldn’t listen. I certainly didn’t look as good as Cindy does in a bikini! I wasn’t even allowed to buy a bikini.”
“Was it really that rough growing up in an all-male household?” Matt asked as he stepped inside the bathroom to brush his teeth. He left the door open.
“Why do you think I’m living a couple of thousand miles away from my family?” she shot back. It could only be called ironic, she decided, that she was once again the only female in an all-male household. From where she sat she could see the smoothly muscled planes of Matt’s bare back as he bent over the sink. The jeans he was wearing rode low on his hips. Sabrina was half tempted to walk across the room just to touch him, even though in a few minutes she could have as much of him as she wanted.
“After you got into that mess out in California you weren’t tempted to run home for aid and comfort?” he asked curiously.
“No more than you were after you left the Army after what happened two years ago.”
There was silence from the bathroom for a moment. Then Matt said slowly, “We do have a few things in common, don’t we?”
“A few,” Sabrina said carefully. She sensed the change in his tone. “Which things, precisely, were you thinking of?”
He rinsed his mouth and straightened away from the sink, reaching for a towel. “How about pride?” He walked to the threshold of the door and stood looking at her.
Sabrina met his eyes with a level glance of her own. “Is this ‘later’?” she asked calmly.
“Looks like it.” He came slowly across the room and sat down on the edge of the bed. Feet planted apart, he rested his elbows on his knees, hands clasped loosely together. There was a cool implacableness in his expression that warned Sabrina she wasn’t going to like “later.”
“Just run through it quick in short, easy sentences, okay? Be succinct.”
He nodded once. “Okay. I told you I’d been offered a job. Rafferty Coyne is the guy making the offer. One month’s work. Forty thousand dollars, cash.”
Sabrina felt as if the wind had been knocked out of her. “That’s certainly short and easy.”
“I can’t take you or Brad with me. I want you to stay here with him while I’m gone.”
“Succinct.” Sabrina closed her eyes and leaned her head back in her chair. “What kind of work pays forty grand a month, Matt?”
“Government work.”
“No wonder government pension programs are always under fire. I had no idea Civil Service paid so well. Maybe I should have skipped the accounting courses after all.” She didn’t open her eyes, but Sabrina felt the tension begin to shimmer in the room.
“This is a one-shot deal, Sabrina.”
“Really? Who gets shot?”
She could almost hear him gathering his patience. “One month, Sabrina. It will all be over in one month.”
“Then what?” She finally opened her eyes and found him watching her with a heavy, brooding expression. Every muscle in his sleek back was taut.