Page 16

Dobby breathes a deep sigh of his own when I shift against him. Apparently I'm interrupting one of his ten daily naps. "If you have the details, let’s walk and talk. Dobby needs some exercise."

An eager Dobby shoots off the floor at the word and bounds to the front door. As I slip on my tennis shoes, Matt finds the leash and clips it onto Dobby’s collar.

"What are you going to do about the age thing?" he asks as we walk down the concrete steps leading from my brownstone. "I don't know exactly how old you are, but there’s no way you’re twenty."

Once we reach the bottom, I take the leash from Matt's hand so he doesn't get dragged down the street by my eighty-pound puppy. "I was twenty, eight years ago." I smirk and watch Dobby smell some flowers before peeing on them. "And a lot of thought went into each fake profile I put out there. A fourteen-year-old was the youngest age I used.”

"Fourteen?" he asks skeptically. The casual brush of his arm and hand against mine as we walk causes me to tense and take a small step away. Wow. I’m pathetic. Has it really been so long since anyone’s touched me that the unintentional brush of hands freaks me out? I shake my head, dispersing the sadness that realization conjures.

"I already look younger because of my thin build, and when I wash all this off"—with my free hand, I gesture to my dark brown lips and smoky eyes—"I look a lot younger."

"And the hair?" he asks as we round the corner toward the dog park. A long, lean finger wraps around a pale pink lock which has fallen from the confines of the bun. Again, the closeness sends my heart racing, but this time in a good way. "I'm sure the general isn’t into pink hair."

A small frown pulls at my lips. "I think losing that part of me will be the most difficult. The nose and lip ring, whatever, but my hair... I'll have to go back to my original color."

"Which is?"

"Blonde. Dirty blonde, I think?" With a shrug, I shift to the right, making his hand drop back to his side. "I've made an appointment at some fancy salon down the block to bleach my color back to basic blonde and get some work done on my face while I'm there."

With a hand on my elbow, he pulls me to an abrupt halt. "Work done? You of all people don't need work done."

Dobby yanks on the leash so hard I stumble a few steps to the side to not fall on my ass. "The past year—okay, never have I kept up with the skin trends and stuff like that. I figure if I get some of the facial things done and peels, it’ll help me look younger. Not that it’ll matter."

A single light brown brow does this crazy arch thing I've never been able to manage. "Okay, now you’ve confused me. You said you were going, so wouldn’t the way you look matter?"

With a shrug, I rub a hand up and down my arm to ward off the somewhat chilly afternoon weather. Dobby stops to smell something on the sidewalk, making me turn away from Matt. A hand caressing my shoulder draws a startled yelp. Ignoring my alarm, he drapes the thin North Face jacket he was wearing over my shoulders.

"Thanks," I murmur as I shove my skinny arms through the sleeves. "What were we talking about? Oh right, my plan. I added into my correspondence that I wanted to be 'pure' when I meet my future 'husband.' Which means no leering eyes from the time I leave the States until he sees me himself."

I give him time to process my explanation as we cross the gravel parking lot of the dog park.

"A covering of some sort," Matt muses. "A burka?"

"Yep." I smile down to the sidewalk, thinking it was quite brilliant. “I want everything from the top of my head down to my toes covered.”

"Clever and beautiful."

Pretending I didn't hear his compliment, I swing open the gate to the dog park and release Dobby to the wild. He scours the park, looking for his friends until he finds the sweet German shepherd we see here often. Across the park, Matt and I find a bench in a deserted area so no one can overhear our conversation and take a seat.

"So." I lean forward and clasp my hands together to keep them from fidgeting. "What are their conditions?"

"They want a way to communicate with you." I open my mouth to debate, but Matt's raised hand stops me. "Even if it's as simple as a tracker.”

"Like what?" I'm not an agent and have zero idea what varieties of bugs and things the agencies have at their disposal. "I don't want anything in my skin."

"Wow, okay, you're not Jason Bourne. Let's take it down a notch. Think of something small, like a locket, and since you'll be wearing a burka, it’ll be easy to conceal. Or they have biodegradable ones that are applied directly to your skin, but I'm not sure one would last as long as we'd need it to."

"I like the locket idea. Okay, what else?"

Before he can respond, I push off the bench and jog toward the doggie orgy to pull Dobby from the bottom of the pile. When I'm back, Matt's still staring at the pile of dogs going at it.

"What are you doing to do about the virgin thing? It's not true, right? I mean, you're young but...."

"Not answering that one."

"Why not?"

"You're my boss, and... I don't know, we've never really talked about anything other than work until now, so talking about my sex life isn't something I want to share with you." The comfortable warmth of the jacket kicks up a thousand notches. No doubt my cheeks are ten shades of red. "And I hope it doesn't come to the general discovering the truth, but I've taken care of it for the initial verification."