Page 52 of Born for Starlight

"I speak Portuguese," Matthew said.

I blinked at him. "Since when? You told me Spanish. Your mother spoke Spanish."

"Spanish from my mother. Portuguese from four years of working cases in Brazil." He shrugged like it was nothing. "You can't work São Paulo with Spanish and charm. I learned."

"He's fluent," Bruno said. "Better accent than mine, which is annoying. It means every conversation that happens around you down there, he understands. The driver, the staff, the crowd. Nobody talks over your head without him hearing it."

Four years of working cases in Brazil. He'd said it like he was telling me where he went to college. Nobody at the table asked what kind of cases. Nobody even blinked, which meant they all already knew.

Damn, there was just more and more and more things that were piling up about this man. My man, apparently. Fluent in Portuguese and arguing for his own downgrade from boyfriend to bodyguard with a straight face.

"Anything else I don't know about you?" I asked him.

"Plenty," Matthew said. "You'll like most of it."

Jase swore. Bruno groaned, got up, and stomped over to the coffee pot

"So, we're agreed," Code said. "Consultant and guide. He runs security, you run the visit. He hires local support if the ground situation calls for it."

"Local support," I repeated. "You mean more bodyguards."

"I mean, if the ground situation calls for it," Matthew said.

"It's two orphanages, Matthew."

"Then it won't call for it, and you'll never see them." He held my eyes. "Bear with me."

There it was again, that look between him and my brothers and cousin, quicker this time, gone before I could catch it.

"Okay," I said. "I’ll bear with you. Separate bedrooms. A consultant." I smiled at the table, my press smile, the one that photographs well and gives nothing away. "This is going to be a very well-organized trip."

"That's the plan," Jase said.

The plan. Right.

I picked up the folder with the circled bedrooms, and I wondered why five large, capable men were this thoroughly organized about a woman handing out oversized checks.

Chapter Seventeen

The suite door had barely closed behind the bellman before I hugged Matthew.

I didn’t plan it. One second, I was standing in the middle of a marble entryway in our luxurious hotel room here in São Luís with morning light pouring through the windows, then the next moment my arms were around him and my face was planted in the middle of his chest.

He went still. His arms came up around me one beat late, as if I had gotten past his defenses.

"What's this for?"

"The plane."

"The plane?"

"Yes, the plane, Matthew." I pulled back enough to look at him. "You knew. You never said one word about the crash, yet you knew I'd be thinking about it the whole way down. So, you sat me down at that little table before we boarded and walked me through everything. The maintenance records. The crew. The man you had look at the engines in Tennessee. You made it boring. You made an eight hour flight over water boring, and then you held my hand and gave me your shoulder until I fell asleep on it."

He looked embarrassed.

"I was doing my job."

"You were being a total sweetheart, and doing everything I needed."