“No,” she replied, monosyllabically.

“So why are you traveling today?” he added. “Business or pleasure?”

Keira hunkered down in her seat. “Business,” she explained. “I’m—”

She stopped herself then, recalling what Bryn and Nina had told her in the coffee shop about playing with fake identities for fun. She could do with a bit of fun. “I’m a wine connoisseur,” she said. “Top of my game. Heading to Italy to find some hidden gems for importing.”

Garrett raised his eyebrows in surprise. “That sounds like fun. A darn sight more exciting than my job, anyway.”

“Oh?” Keira asked. “What’s your job?”

“I’m in accounting,” he said. “Well, not completely. It’s a bit hard to explain. It’s easier just to say I’m an accountant for accountants. Does that make sense?”

Painfully so, Keira thought.

“Yes,” she said aloud.

How typical that she’d be sitting beside an accountant. It was like fate was trying to tell her to give up the search for Mr. Right and settle down with Mr. Math!

“I’m sure you don’t want to hear me drone on about my job though,” the man added. “Yours sounds fascinating. How did you get into it?”

“It is fascinating,” Keira continued, surprising herself with how easily she was lying and how much enjoyment she was getting from it. “My father was a wine importer,” she added. “He loved his job so passionately I was even conceived in a vineyard.”

She felt a little spark of excitement as the lie rolled easily off her tongue. She was really getting into the spirit of it. Her own father had left when she was very young and hadn’t been involved in her life much at all, so inventing a persona for him was easy. Plus, all this embellishment was going to come in handy over the course of her assignment, she figured, since she was going to have to pretend she still believed in love.

“Oh my,” the man beside her said.

“I know. He married there as well. But, sadly, he also died in that very same vineyard.” She sighed theatrically. “It only made sense to have him buried there too.”

Keira noticed the way the man moved to increase the distance between them. He was losing the will to speak to her, probably because of the way she’d steered the conversation toward the morbid. She laughed to herself as he tried to switch his attention to the in-flight movie.

The plane soared higher into the air. Soon the clouds were far below them.

Finally getting some peace and quiet, Keira took the opportunity to look through the itinerary that Heather had prepared for her. Immediately, it brought memories flooding back to her of her last assignment. Heather had used the same font, the same clinically organized layout with bullet points and headings. During the month in Ireland, Keira had defiled it, getting it covered in Guinness and bits of oil from the hearty Irish breakfasts she’d eat with Shane. There was no chance of that happening this time. She could already feel how different things would be with this second assignment. She felt older. More jaded.