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replied. “You don’t trust anyone. You keep to yourself, do your job and go home.”
    Her eyebrows arched. “Are we doing a psychological profile?”
    He laughed coolly. “I like to know something about the people I work with.”
    “I’m twenty-six years old, I’ve never been arrested, I hate liver, I pay my bills on time and I’ve never cheated on my income tax. Oh,” she added, “and I wear size nine shoes, in case it ever comes up.”
    He chuckled then. His dark eyes were amused, alive, intent on her face. “Do I sound like an interrogator?”
    “Something like that,” she said, smiling.
    “Consuelo says you speak Spanish.”
    “Tengo que hablarlo,” she replied. “Para hacer mi trabajo.”
    “¿Y qué es su trabajo, pues, rubia?” he replied.
    She smiled gently. “You speak it so beautifully,” she said involuntarily. “I was taught Castilian, although I don’t lisp my‘c’s.”
    “You make yourself understood,” he told her. “Are you literate?”
    She nodded. “I love to read in Spanish.”
    “What do you like to read?”
    She bit her lower lip and gave him an odd look. “Well…”
    “Come on.”
    She sighed. “I like to read about Juan Belmonte and Joselito and Manolete.”
    His eyebrows arched toward his hairline. “Bullfighters? You like to read about Spanish bullfighters?”
    She scowled. “Old bullfighters,” she corrected. “Belmonte and Joselito fought bulls in the early part of the twentieth century, and Manolete died in the ring in 1947.”
    “So they did.” He studied her over his coffee mug. “You’re full of surprises, aren’t you? Soccer and bullfighting.” He shook his head. “I would have taken you for a woman who liked poetry.”
     
    I F HE’D KNOWN HER , and her lifestyle, it would have shocked him that she’d even considered doing manual labor, much less read poetry. She was amused at the thought.
    “I do like poetry,” she replied. And she did.
    “So do I,” he said surprisingly.
    “Which poets?” she fished.
    He smiled. “Lorca.”
    Her lips parted on a shocked breath. “He wrote about the death of his friend Sánchez Mejías in the bull ring.”
    “Yes, and was killed himself in the Spanish Civil War a few years later.”
    “How odd,” she said, thinking aloud.
    “That I read Lorca?”
    “Well, considering what he wrote, yes. It’s something of a coincidence, isn’t it?”
    “What poets do you read?” he returned.
    “I like Rupert Brooke.” In fact, as she looked at Rodrigo she was remembering a special poem, about death finding the poet long before he tired of watching the object of the poem. She thought involuntarily that Rodrigo was good to look at. He was very handsome.
    He pursed his lips. “I wonder if we could possibly be thinking of the same poem?” he wondered aloud.
    “Which one did you have in mind?” she probed.
    “‘Death will find me long before I tire of watching you,’” he began in a slow, sensuous, faintly accented tone.
    The peach she was peeling fell out of her hands and rolled across the kitchen floor while she stared at the man across the table from her with wide-eyed shock.

3
    R ODRIGO STARED AT HER curiously. She was a contradiction. She seemed simple and sweet, but she was educated. He was certain that she wasn’t what she appeared to be, but it was far too soon to start dissecting her personality. She interested him, but he didn’t want her to. He was still mourning Sarina. Anyway, it amused him that she liked the same poems he did.
    She got up slowly and picked up her peach, tossing it away because Consuelo had waxed the floor that morning and she was wary of getting even a trace of wax in her fruit. She washed her hands again as well.
    “I’m glad to see that you appreciate the danger of contamination,” Rodrigo said.
    She smiled. “Consuelo would have whacked me with a broom if she’d caught me putting anything in the pot that had been on her floor, no matter how clean it