by Anne Stuart
She stared, at him for a long moment. “What did you do with it?”
“Sent it to Phillip. I neglected to mention that it came from me and not you. I didn’t think it mattered,” he said gently.
“Why did you take it?”
He shrugged. “I guess I can’t resist. Every now and then something comes along and all my good intentions go out the window. I really need someone to keep me in line.”
“What sort of someone?”
“Well, I’d prefer another cat burglar. Someone who could climb over rooftops with me if the need arose. Someone who could even do it by herself if she had to.”
Ferris held her breath. “Wouldn’t that be encouraging you?”
“Oh, I don’t think so. She could make sure I only broke into places that I had to. Maybe she should be afraid of heights. That way she won’t be into doing it at the drop of a hat.”
“Sounds logical,” she said softly. “Does she need anything else?”
“An American Express card. Mine got mysteriously shredded. I don’t know how I’m going to explain it to the company. Not to mention getting certain slightly illegal tools replaced. I suffered a lot of losses today.”
“Did you?”
He nodded, moving into the room with his usual catlike grace. “I lost my secretary to my assistant. It looks like they’re going to make a match of it.”
Ferris grinned. “That’s wonderful.”
“And my tools of the trade suffered considerable damage,” he continued. “I’ve probably earned the displeasure of Regina Merriam, not to mention half of San Francisco society, for my part in Olivia and Dale Summers’s fall from grace.”
“I think you’re more likely to win appreciation for that one.”
“Maybe.” He shrugged again, and Ferris suddenly realized that cool, sophisticated Patrick Blackheart, cat burglar extraordinaire, was nervous. Nervous as a cat. “Most people knew about their gambling debts, so I don’t think it came as too great a surprise.”
“What else did you lose today?”
“The respect of my lawyer, for jumping to conclusions. And I may have lost the woman I love. I’m sorry, Francesca.”
Slowly she closed her eyes as relief washed over her. When she opened them, he was staring down at her intently, and she smiled, a tremulous, loving smile. “You haven’t lost her,” she said. “You haven’t even discouraged her a little.”
He still didn’t cross the last few feet of space. “Trust is a funny thing,” he said meditatively. “It’s a gift that’s given, it’s something you earn, and yet it’s so damned fragile. And without trust, love isn’t worth a damn.”
Ferris pulled herself into a sitting position, looking at him intently. “Blackheart,” she said steadily, “there’s trust and there’s trust. I trust you with my heart and my soul and my life. If I find that I can’t trust you with other women’s jewels, I’m just going to have to accept the fact that I’ll be spending a lot of time returning them when you’re not looking. At least I’m not without experience.”
Those beautiful hands of his caught her bare shoulders, and he was drawing her slowly up to him, almost into his arms, when a startled look came into his eyes. “What the hell are you wearing, woman? You have the strangest taste in nightclothes.”
“You can always take them off me,” she murmured, moving the rest of the way. His mouth met hers in an open, searing kiss that weakened her already abused leg. She sank against him, and slowly he lowered her to the bed, following her down. His hands were eager, hurried, but oh, so gentle as they stripped the ridiculous clothes away from her body. Slowly, carefully he loved her, his body tuned to her every need, anticipating them and satisfying them with an almost mystical cleverness that left her reaching, longing, aching, and then blissfully sated.
She lay in his arms, cradled against his warm body. He did look beautiful against the wine-colored sheets, his skin warm and firm and faintly damp with sweat.
“I suppose it’s only fair to tell you,” he murmured against her cloud of hair.
“Tell me what?”
“That I’ve decided I don’t need to replace my tools of the trade.”
She lay very still against him, holding her breath. “Why not?”
“I think I’ve broken into enough places in my misspent life,” he drawled. “I held on to the lockpicks just in case I wanted to go back to the life. I’ve realized in the last few days that I never want to go back. My fall and the prison term were only an excuse to put a stop to it.”
“Won’t you miss the excitement?” She had to ask. She could feel the smile that creased his face as it rested against her temple.
“Not with you around.” His lips brushed her damp forehead. “I don’t suppose there’s any chance of your making a similar sacrifice?”
“Hell, no,” she replied lazily. “I intend to keep on breaking into places.”
“I wasn’t talking about B and E,” he said with mock severity. “I was wondering when you felt like facing Francesca Berdahofski.”
She bit him, lightly, on the smooth skin of his bony shoulder. “I did, Blackheart. Days ago. If you’d stopped to buzz my apartment, you would have noticed the new name on the mailbox. Ferris Byrd bit the dust the night of the Puffin Ball.”
“I’m glad. I have my reputation to consider, after all. I wouldn’t want it known that I was consorting with someone living a double life.”
She bit him again, a little harder, her mouth nibbling at his warm, enticing skin, and he growled an approving response.
“There’s one major problem with all this,” he said as his hand reached up to stroke her neck.
“What’s that?” She wasn’t going to fall for one of his teasing ploys this time. There were no major problems that would stop her.
“If you marry me and change your name, you won’t be able to call me Blackheart in that deliciously scathing voice of yours. Not when you share the same name.”
She grinned up at him. “Of course I can. You don’t think I’d settle for anything as tame as Patrick, do you? You have a wicked, black heart, and your name suits you better than anything your parents might have saddled you with.”
“I thought so, too,” he said complacently.
“What do you mean?” She was suddenly wary.
“Just that you aren’t the only one who changed their name. John Patrick Blackheart is a much more fitting name for a cat burglar than Edwin Bunce.”
“Oh, no,” she groaned, hiding her face against his smooth silky chest.
“Oh, yes. Still want to marry me?”
She eyed him. “Can I marry Patrick Blackheart? I’ll accept Francesca Berdahofski, but Francesca Bunce . . .”
“Changing my name was one of the few legal moves I made in my formative years,” he murmured, kissing her lightly on the nose. “You can be a Blackheart, too, but you’ll have to make it legal.”
“Whenever you want, Blackheart. I have to warn you, though. I expect I’m out of a job. Phillip won’t want his ex-fiancée as an administrative assistant.”
“Kate’s out of a job, too. I don’t suppose you’d be interested in whipping Blackheart, Inc., into shape?”
“Along with Blackheart himself? That might prove very . . . challenging.”
His mouth dropped onto hers, his tongue tracing the soft contours of her lips. “Why don’t we start now?” he whispered.
“Because we’re coming to the best part of the movie,” she murmured limpidly. “And I want to see how Cary Grant manages those rooftops. Professional curiosity, you know. Just because you’re giving up a life of crime doesn’t mean that I intend to follow suit.” Rolling away from him, she grabbed the remote control and turned up the sound.
A moment later the little box was wrenched gently from her hand, the televis
ion went blank, and the room was plunged into darkness. “I’ll tell you all about it,” he drawled. “If you come here.”
“Well, it’s a tough choice,” she said on a low note of laughter. “But I guess they’ll rerun the movie.”
The End
CATSPAW II
Cast of Characters
John Patrick Blackheart—A retired cat burglar now running his own security firm in San Francisco. But was he really retired?
Ferris Byrd—Could she make a life with a man she couldn’t trust?
Danielle Porcini—All she cared about was escaping her abusive partner-in-crime and wreaking a belated vengeance.
Stephen McNab—A cop with his own ideas of vengeance.
Senator Phillip Merriam—He was willing to do anything to gain national power, including selling out his own mother.
Marco Porcini—He possessed the cunning of a fox and the intellect of a soap dish.
“DO YOU EXPECT me to be Spider-Man?” Ferris demanded.
She and Blackheart were standing in a grove of trees on the west side of Regina’s stately mansion, looking at the sharply angled roof four stories above.
“I expect you to follow my lead, dear heart. If the two of us can break in, then the place isn’t as secure as it should be.” He swung himself up into a tree and then began climbing.
She could hear the distant noise from the circus on the great lawn on the eastern side of the building; she could hear the muffled roar of the big cats. Ferris grimly reached for the first branch. “Are you up there?” she called. “I’m coming.”
He was waiting for her, miles away from the safety of the thick-limbed oak tree, lounging indolently on the third-floor balcony.
“I won’t let you fall. Jump! Trust me at least that far.”
“I don’t trust you, Patrick. I thought we made that clear.”
“Come on,” he said, and his hand closed over hers, yanking suddenly. Caught off guard, she had no chance to do anything more than shut her eyes and leap.
Chapter One
Vertigo
(Paramount 1958)
FRANCESCA BERDAHOFSKI, alias Ferris Byrd, stood in a pool of water outside her apartment, staring in frustration at the row of shiny new locks on the otherwise flimsy door. She shivered, sniffled, then sneezed, and for a brief moment leaned her forehead against the white-painted pine.
It was September in San Francisco, a cold, rainy September that made Ferris long for hot, barren deserts and doors without locks. All her doubts and uncertainties were pressing in on her, culminating in the frustration of the three new locks that she still hadn’t managed to make work.
She pushed herself back, shoved her rain-drenched black hair away from her face, and began to search through her tasteful leather purse. She never could find her keys, and after a miserable day like today, starting with no coffee and a broken-down car, then tantrums among the socialites she was busy babysitting, and finally a diabolical cloudburst on the way home, it was clear that her rotten luck would hold.
No keys in her purse. While her apartment was usually a shambles, she kept her purse ruthlessly organized, and there were no keys lurking underneath the slim leather checkbook, the tiny flacon of Obsession, the Estee Lauder lipstick. There was only the piece of paper with the phone number of the garage written in blue ink. The garage where her navy-blue Mercedes was undergoing surgery. The garage that held her car, her car keys and the attached keys to her apartment.
Ferris Byrd, a woman of great self-possession who never cried, promptly burst into tears. She gave in to temptation and pounded on the unyielding door in mute frustration. The only answer was a thin, plaintive mew.
“Blackie,” Ferris murmured mournfully to the cat on the other side of her door. “Why can’t you be like your namesake and materialize through locked doors?”
Blackie’s response was his usual huffy snarl, and through the thin door Ferris could hear thirteen pounds of alley cat stalk away from his mistress’s voice.
“Go ahead, be like that,” Ferris said bitterly. “Desert me in my hour of need.” The unfortunate phrasing came a little too close to the truth of her current situation. Sighing, Ferris faced the unpleasant alternatives. She could either try to find a taxi and make her way to Guido’s Imports to fetch her keys, or she could break into her own apartment.
Guido’s Imports sounded appealing, but it was almost six o’clock, and Guido kept banker’s hours. The big building on Canal Street would be locked up tighter than her apartment.
So breaking and entering it was. Not through the three shiny brass locks adorning her door. She could thank her conscientious fiancé for those. Trust a retired cat burglar to know the best, most unpickable locks on the market. Of course, he’d blithely told her that as far as he was concerned no locks were unpickable, but her talents as a cracksman or cracks woman were not as impressive. Besides, she’d mangled Blackheart’s picklocks and he’d promised there was no need to replace them. And she’d believed him. Hadn’t she?
If she was going to get into the apartment, it would have to be through the second-floor terraced balcony. And while she could always wait a few minutes in the wistful hope that the heavy downpour outside might abate, common sense told her it would be a waste of time. It was getting darker, the rain had been falling steadily for the last hour and a half, and with her luck it might even turn into a thunderstorm. The door wasn’t going to open automatically, and she had no choice. It was time to renew her acquaintance with B and E.
She shrugged out of her peach silk raincoat and left it in a sodden pile outside her door. She’d never manage to scramble up the side of the old frame building with that flapping around her, and she was going to get soaked, anyway. She might as well make her attempt at scaling the building in the least encumbered condition.
She considered dumping her purse on top of the raincoat, then thought better of it. Her building wasn’t the most secure place in the world; only her apartment was impenetrable. And her purse contained gold credit cards, too much cash and her birth control pills, none of which she cared to replace.
Slinging the thin strap over her head, she headed down the stairs and out into the rain, prepared to assault the fortress.
If anything, the rain had become even more relentless. The weight of it pulled at her loosely knotted hair, and she could feel sopping tendrils drip down her neck and over her high cheekbones like rats’ tails. The water was running down her thin silk blouse, pooling in her bra, and her leather high-heeled shoes were squelching noisily as she moved around the outside of the building.
One of San Francisco’s steep hilly streets ran along the side of the house, a blessing that Ferris was now heartily grateful for. Approaching her small balcony from the back corner of the building, her apartment was only a story and a half from the street, instead of the two and half that it was from the front.
The rain-swept streets were deserted, a fact that Ferris noticed with mixed feedings. On the one hand, she didn’t particularly want an audience as she shinnied up the side of her building. On the other, maybe there would have been a Good Samaritan who shared the skills her missing fiancé had in abundance.
Don’t think of him, she ordered herself, gritting her teeth as the water poured in sheets down her back. You’ll just get madder. Think of a hot bath, an oversize glass of brandy and ice cream. Double Rainbow coffee, a whole pint of it, while you watch something soothing on TV Something that has nothing to do with retired cat burglars. Or practicing cat burglars, either.
The battered trash cans, Blackie’s favorite home away from home, were lined up haphazardly in the alley behind Ferris’s building, reeking of garbage and heaven only knew what else. Breathing through her mouth, she wrapped her arms around one smelly container and half carried, half dragged it around the corner, stopping under her second-floor balcony. She was
cursing beneath her breath, sweating, her hands cold and slippery on the metal, her feet sliding around inside her wet shoes, so intent on her misery that she didn’t notice the car parked opposite, didn’t feel the gaze boring into her back.
She climbed up onto the rickety garbage can, scraping her knees on the dented lid. She got to her feet, bracing herself against the rain-slick siding, her ankles tottery in the slippery high heels as she stared down at her long, wet legs and shredded stockings.
“Wouldn’t you just know it?” she demanded of the rain-dark skies. “The first time in fifteen years I dare to wear a miniskirt, and I end up climbing up a building in it. Hell and damnation.”
The sky responded with an ominous rumble of thunder, and the lid of the can collapsed, sending Ferris into the pile of stinking refuse.
She practically catapulted out, beyond recriminations, beyond tears, beyond cursing. Upending the garbage can and scattering the ripped plastic bags of trash over the sidewalk, she kicked off her useless high heels and climbed back up, balancing on the upside-down can as she set one wet stockinged foot on her neighbor’s windowsill. Clinging to the framework, she reached for the tendrils of ivy that cascaded down from her balcony, yanking hard.
A few wet leaves came off in her hands, but the vine held. Wrapping her arm in the thick, wet greenery, she hauled herself upward, her body swinging slightly, her purse slapping against her breasts, the ropelike vines cutting into her soft hands. She reached blindly with her feet, stubbing her toes against the wet wood, and pushed her way upward, slowly, painfully, the vine’s support slipping slightly, the rain pouring down mercilessly all the while. The rim of her balcony was less than a foot beyond her reach, a tantalizing ten inches or so. If she could just manage one more boost up the clinging tendrils, she’d be home free.
She yanked, the vine pulled away from the wall, and for a moment she was swinging out over the garbage-littered sidewalk. She shut her eyes, uttering a little moan of terror. She hated heights, hated them with a passion bordering on mindless panic. Why in heaven’s name hadn’t she done the sensible thing and gone to a hotel for the night? Blackie would have survived without her.
