the starboard side, and started back that aisle. He had no idea what he
was doing until he stopped at row twenty-two and looked down at the
mother and child in seats H and I. The woman was in her late twenties;
she had a sweet face, not beautiful but gentle and pretty. The child was
five or six years old.
The woman looked up at him curiously, and Jim heard himself say “Mrs.
Dubrovek?”
She blinked in surprise. “I’m sorry. . . do I know you?”
“No, but Ed told me you were taking this flight and asked me to look you
up.” When he spoke that name, he knew Ed was her husband, though he had
no idea where that knowledge had come from. He squatted down beside her
seat and gave her his best smile. “I’m Steve Harkman.
Ed’s in sales, I’m in advertising, so we drive each other nuts in about
a dozen meetings a week.”
Christine Dubrovek’s madonna face brightened. “Oh, yes, he’s spoken
about you. You only joined the company, what, a month ago?”
“Six weeks now,” Jim said, flowing with it, confident the right answers
would pour out of him even if he didn’t know what in the hell they were.
“And this must be Casey.”
The little girl was in the seat by the window. She raised her head
shifting her attention from a pop-up storybook. “I’m gonna be six
tomorrow, it’s my birthday, and we’re gonna visit grandpop and grandma
They’re real old, but they’re nice.”
He laughed and said, “I’ll bet they’re sure proud to have a
granddaughter cute as you.”
When Holly saw him coming along the starboard aisle, she was so startled
that she almost popped out of her seat. At first she thought he was
looking straight at her. She had the urge to start blurting out a
confession “Yes, all right, I’ve been following you, checking up on you,
invading your privacy with a vengeance”-even before he reached her. She
knew precious few other reporters who would have felt guilty about
probing into his life, but she couldn’t seem to eliminate that streak of
decency that had interfered with her career advancement ever since she’d
gotten her journal ism degree. It almost wrecked everything for her
again-until she realized he was looking not at her but at the brunette
immediately in front of her Holly swallowed hard, and slid down a few
inches in her seat instead of leaping up in a frenzy of confession. She
picked up the airline’s magazine which she’d previously discarded;
slowly, deliberately she opened it to cover her face, afraid that too
quick a move would draw his attention before she had concealed herself
behind those glossy pages.
The magazine blocked her view of him, but she could hear everything he
was saying and most of the woman’s responses. She listened to him
identify himself as Steve Harkman, a company ad executive, and wondered
what his charade was all about.
She dared to tilt her head far enough to peek around the magazine with
one eye. Ironheart was hunkered down in the aisle beside the woman’s
seat, so close that Holly could have spit on him, although she was no
more practiced at target-spitting than she was at clandestine
surveillance.
She realized her hands were trembling, making the magazine rattle
softly. She untilted her head, stared at the pages in front of her, and
concentrated on being calm.
“How on earth did you recognize me?” Christine Dubrovek asked.
“Well, Ed doesn’t quite paper his office with pictures of you two,” Jim
said.
“Oh, that’s right,” she said.
“Listen, Mrs. Dubrovek-”
“Call me Christine.”
“Thank you. Christine. . . I’ve got an ulterior motive for coming over
here and pestering you like this. According to Ed, you’ve got a knack
for matchmaking.”
That must have been the right thing to say. Already aglow, her sweet
face brightened further. “Well, I do like getting people together if I
think they’re right for each other, and I’ve got to admit I’ve had more
than a little success at it.”
“You make matches, Mommy?” Casey Dubrovek asked.
Uncannily in synch with the workings of her six-year-old’s mind,