The Fiancée Caper

by Maureen Child

  “It’s their specialty,” he said. “I come here quite often when I’m in London.”

  “But you’re not in London often.”

  It wasn’t a question. He shrugged, still holding the ring, and watched as she sliced into her beef and took a bite. “No. I spend a lot of time traveling.”

  “That much I know,” she said.

  “And you’ve turned the conversation away from your engagement ring.” He held the diamond toward her, waiting for her to take it from him. When she didn’t, he simply took her left hand in his and slid the ring home.

  “It’s not my ring. It belongs to that woman in Barcelona.”

  “Actually, no, it doesn’t. It’s been mine for twelve years.”

  “Having it doesn’t mean it’s yours.”

  “To my way of thinking, it does.” He picked up his own knife and fork and glared at her when she went to take the ring off. “Leave it on, Marie. It’s a part of your costume for the little play we’ll be putting on for the next week or so. In fact,” he added, “think of the ring as paste. Just part of the make-believe.”

  “Paste.” She looked at the ring that took up the entire first knuckle of her ring finger. “I don’t know if that will help.”

  Shaking his head, Gianni told her, “You’ll just have to swallow those honest tendencies of yours for the next while. To play the game you want played, you’ll have to see more shades of gray than black and white.”

  But as he watched her, he saw that her features looked troubled and her eyes were wary. He had the distinct impression that Marie O’Hara was far too honest to be able to pull this off.

  * * *

  Marie wasn’t sure she could pull this off.

  Living with Gianni was more difficult than she’d imagined it would be. For the last few days, they’d spent hours in each other’s company every day. It was only at night, when she retreated to the sterile, cold confines of her guest room in his flat, that she had any peace at all. Any time to think. To wonder how she’d gotten herself into this and how she would survive it.

  Gianni was sexy, smooth and very charming. Yes, he was a thief—or a reformed one—but there was a lot more to him than that. He was fun. His sense of humor was wry and often self-deprecating, which she found really attractive. He loved going places, seeing things, and that appealed to her as well. He’d taken her on a tour of London, hitting every tourist spot she’d ever heard of and a few she hadn’t. They’d seen the royal jewels, the Tower of London and stood outside Buckingham Palace to watch the changing of the guard.

  He’d escorted her through Westminster Abbey, Trafalgar Square and down Carnaby Street. They’d had lunch at pubs, dined out at elegant five-star restaurants for dinner and had gone dancing the night before at a private club.

  All in all, he was making himself so charming she was finding him desperately difficult to resist. Especially when she wasn’t supposed to be resisting him. He took every opportunity to touch her, to hold her hand, brush her hair back from her face. He hadn’t kissed her yet and she didn’t know if she was relieved by that or not. She supposed they should practice that as well, but Marie had the feeling Gianni didn’t need much practice in that department. And kissing him was only going to make her nights feel longer and the days more confusing.

  She looked down at the ring on her finger and sighed again. It was huge. And stolen. And it was beginning to feel way too good on her hand.

  What did that say about her, she wondered.

  Dancing with Gianni the night before, she’d felt that slow slide of heat moving through her system as he held her close and together they swayed to the sultry music soaring around them. The other dancers had disappeared, until it felt as if only the two of them were there in that room.

  His hard body pressed along hers, his right hand sliding up and down her spine, his deep brown eyes locked on hers until all she saw of the world were those depths shining with heat and—

  “Here you are.” Gianni’s voice interrupted her thoughts, thank heaven.

  She turned from the stone railing and her view of the Thames to face him as he approached. His dark hair ruffled by the wind, he wore a short-sleeved, black-collared shirt, blue jeans and black boots that made him look both amazingly attractive and dangerous. A heady combination.

  He was carrying two large cups and handed one to her. “Latte?”

  “Thanks.”

  “So,” he asked, standing alongside her at the railing, “what were you thinking of just then. You looked absolutely fierce.”

  “Nothing really,” she lied and wondered if she should be worried that lying was beginning to come much easier to her. She looked out over the Thames at the other side of the river to where Big Ben and the British parliament buildings stood as a testament to the ages.

  “You’re still not very good at lying,” he said, a smile taking the sting out of his words.

  “Thank you. I was just thinking that I was getting too good at it.”

  “No. You still have honesty shining from your eyes. Shame, really.”

  Marie laughed and realized he had meant her to when his own smile grew bigger. “Honesty isn’t a disease, you know. It’s not contagious.”

  “You should tell my brother—Paulo—that.” He braced his elbows on the stone railing and studied the swift moving river in front of them. “Since I made that deal with Interpol, Paulo has kept his distance, as if afraid he, too, might be bitten by the honesty bug that claimed our sister from birth.”

  “Your sister, Teresa?” she asked, turning her face into the wind to look at him. “The one who lives on Tesoro?”

  “Sì,” he said softly and there was a tenderness in his smile now that tugged at Marie’s heart. “She is my only sister. And from the time she was a girl, she knew she had no desire to be a thief like the rest of us.”

  “Wow.” Marie knew what it was like growing up into a family legacy. Her own family had been in law enforcement forever. She had no idea what they might have thought had she not chosen the same path. “How did your father take that?”

  “At first, he was disappointed I think,” Gianni said, considering it. “But all he really wanted was for her to be happy. So though he didn’t understand, he supported her dreams.”

  “He sounds like a good father.”

  Gianni turned to meet her gaze. “He is. He has always been there for us. Since my mother passed away, he is lonely I think, but he never lets on.”

  “My dad was great, too,” she said wistfully, thinking as she always did, just how much she missed her father. “He was so funny. Always made me laugh. Always there to hug me and tell me everything would be all right. Always...there. Until he wasn’t.”

  “How long ago did you lose him?”

  “Five years,” she said. “A drunk driver plowed into his squad car. He died instantly.”

  “I’m sorry,” Gianni said and reached out to take her hand in his.

  The heat from his touch settled into her skin and bones and left her feeling comforted...and more. The more was what she was worried about.

  Keeping her hand tucked into his, he straightened and started walking.

  “Where are we going?”

  “To my flat to pack. Tomorrow, we leave for Tesoro,” he said, glancing down at her.

  “Tomorrow?” She would be meeting his family. Playing the role of tender lover and lying to people she hadn’t even met yet. Nerves rattled through her quickly and left her knees shaking.

  “Sì,” he said. “It’s time. Interpol expects me to be there before the jewelry designer’s show to keep an eye on things. And my sister will want me to have time to admire my new nephew.”

  “Right.” Nodding, she told herself that it was best to go and get it started. They would get through the christening, complete Gianni’s job
for Interpol, then they could find Jean Luc and reclaim the necklace. And then, she would go home. Back to New York.

  Funny. The thought of going home didn’t sound quite as appealing as it had a few weeks ago.

  Six

  She wasn’t nervous. Not really. She simply couldn’t sleep. Big difference.

  Marie wandered quietly through the sterile-looking, white-on-white-on-never-ending-white apartment. She’d been there for days and still hadn’t gotten used to it. And now that she knew Gianni a little better she couldn’t imagine why he liked it. A person’s home was supposed to reflect the owner’s personality, wasn’t it? If that were true, the decorator must never have met Gianni in person.

  He was warm and vibrant and alive and this place was void of everything even remotely like that. The only spot in his flat that she felt comfortable was on the terrace, which was where she was headed at the moment.

  Marie didn’t want to wake Gianni, so she opened the sliding glass door an inch at a time, wincing with every tiny squeak. Since he lived in a tenth-floor penthouse, the wind was wild and immediately reached for her when she opened the door just wide enough to slip through. She didn’t care, though—it felt wonderful, that cool slide of air against her skin, lifting her hair, molding the short sleep shirt she wore to her body.

  This high, the sounds of the city below were nothing more than a muted roar. The stars were bright, the moon was half-full, a thought that, she considered, made her an optimist, and in the distance, the London Eye shone like a beacon.

  The railing around the terrace had been planted with hedges that were bursting with summer color. Pinks and oranges and yellows nestled amid the dark green that felt somehow celebratory. There was a table and chairs—surprisingly comfortable—and Marie skirted around it to stand at the rail looking down on the city.

  So much had happened in just a few days. Gianni Coretti kept surprising her, which left her feeling unsteady, off-balance. She’d expected him to be, well, bad somehow. He was a thief, after all. But instead, he was warm and funny and kind, too. Just yesterday he’d taken her to the West End, where they’d wandered through cobblestoned streets, and stopped at a sidewalk café for lunch.

  Then, Marie remembered, Gianni had surprised her again.

  She’d been looking into the window of a boutique shop, while the crowds milled around her. Everyone was busy, hurrying along the sidewalks. The sun peeked in and out of the clouds and a soft breeze blew a crumpled newspaper across the street. Violin music soared—sad, beautiful, an accompaniment to the summer day that swam in the background. Marie hardly noticed, captivated by the chunky, heeled boots she’d spotted in the window.

  But her gaze softened, shifted, until she saw the reflection of the people behind her. And that’s when she noticed Gianni. He’d stopped beside an old man sitting in an alleyway, playing his violin with an expression of concentrated love on his features. There was an empty bowl for donations in front of him and no one else in the city even seemed to see the old man, who played his heart out on an instrument that looked as old as the man himself.

  But Gianni had noticed. Quietly, he dropped a handful of bank notes into the bowl, then stood a moment as if letting the man know his music was appreciated. Then he moved on, heading for Marie, and she quickly turned to smile brightly at him, pretending she hadn’t seen. Hadn’t witnessed his unexpected act of kindness and generosity.

  Now, she couldn’t help asking herself, what was she supposed to think about a man like that? He was a thief. He’d spent years of his life stealing from the rich, and yet he took the time to notice an old man in need and do what he could to help.

  It had shaken her, she realized. That glimpse into another side of the man she thought she knew. The man she’d assumed him to be. Her entire life, she’d been raised to believe in good and bad, black and white, legal and illegal. There were no shadows in the O’Hara world. Everything was stark. But now she was seeing those shadows and watching as black and white blended into a gray she wasn’t used to dealing with.

  And he made her feel things she’d never felt before. Things that she really shouldn’t be feeling. The ring on her left hand felt suddenly much heavier than it should. As if it were tugging not only on her ring finger, but also at her soul. She glanced down at the mammoth diamond and it winked at her in the moonlight. Stolen, she reminded herself. From a woman in Barcelona. And then kept as a trophy by the thief who even now was taking up way too many of Marie’s thoughts.

  “Okay,” she said softly, “maybe I am nervous.”

  “No reason to be.”

  That deep voice coming from behind her startled Marie enough that she actually jumped, then clutched at the base of her throat as she whirled around to face Gianni. “Trying to get me to fall off the edge of your terrace?”

  He leaned one shoulder against the frame of the open sliding glass door. His chest was bare and he wore only a pair of black silk sleep pants that rode low on his narrow hips. In the moonlight, the man’s skin glowed like old bronze. Well-defined muscles were etched into his chest and the drawstring of the pants he wore was tied so loosely, it would only take the slightest tug to have those pants drop to the floor.

  Marie swallowed hard as a wave of heat accompanied that thought and she really hoped the light was dim enough that he couldn’t see what he was doing to her.

  “The only way you could fall off this terrace,” he said, his Italian-flavored voice rumbling over her, “would be to step over the hedges, climb the rail and jump. You’re not that nervous, are you?”

  “If you come any closer I might be,” she muttered thickly.

  Desire pumped hot and rich through her veins and she felt a tingle of anticipation set up shop between her thighs. This was so much harder than she’d thought it would be. This whole pretense of closeness was taking on a reality of its own and with it came other feelings that she simply wasn’t prepared to face. Breathing was suddenly a battle and as he pushed away from the door frame and walked lazily toward her, his long legs crossing the terrace in just a few carefully measured steps, she knew it wasn’t going to get any easier.

  Was he that tall when he was dressed?

  She managed a deep breath and held it, hoping it would steady her. Instead, it only made her feel even more light-headed. The whole fiancée thing suddenly felt a lot more real. A lot more immediate. A lot more dangerous.

  “Just...keep your distance, Coretti.”

  “Worried, O’Hara?” he asked, that dark, unbelievable voice wrapping itself around her.

  What was it about the man’s voice that could turn her insides into a puddle of goo? “No, I’m just cautious.”

  “I’m not interested in cautious,” he said. “I’m much more interested in why you’re feeling so wary.”

  “Because this—you. Me. Probably not a good idea.” Marie backed up a step or two, but there was nowhere to go, really. The terrace just wasn’t that big.

  “Seems an excellent idea to me. We’re both adults. We both know what we want. So what’s making you nervous?” he asked, every step bringing him closer.

  “At the moment?” She took a breath. “You.”

  One corner of his mouth tipped up briefly. The wind tossed his hair across his forehead and in the dim lighting, his dark eyes were filled with shadows.

  “I think I enjoy making you nervous,” he admitted, skirting the edge of the table, relentlessly moving in on her.

  “That’s great,” Marie told him, looking behind her as if expecting to find some secret passage leading directly from the terrace to the inside of the apartment. No such luck. “Happy you’re happy.”

  “We could both be happy.”

  She whipped her head around to look at him. He was so close now, all she had to do was lift one hand and she could trace her fingertips along the sculpted ridges of his muscled ch
est. And oh, how her fingertips burned to do just that. So she folded her hands into fists at her sides in an effort to curb her impulses.

  “And that means...”

  He laughed shortly. “You know what it means.”

  Oh, she really did. And even if her brain hadn’t understood exactly what he was talking about, her body surely did. That slow burn had just whooshed into an inferno.

  “Yeah, I do.” She shook her hair back from her face and forced herself to meet his eyes. Oh, she knew that one night with him would leave her more than happy. “But not gonna happen.”

  He lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “Up to you, of course, but we are ‘engaged.’”

  How easily he dismissed her. One moment using that oh so delicious voice and the heat in his gaze to seduce her, and the next, shrugging it all away as if he weren’t bothered by the heat pulsing between them. She didn’t know if she should be impressed or insulted. God, why couldn’t she do the same with her own wayward thoughts?

  “Why are you even awake?”

  “I’m a light sleeper. I heard you open the door and go outside. Thought I’d check on you.”

  “That was...thoughtful.”

  “Oh, I’m a very thoughtful guy,” he agreed. His gaze swept up and down her favorite sleep shirt and she knew what he was seeing. It was black, with two giraffes, stretching their necks up high beside the caption, It’s Been a Lo-oo-ong Night.

  His lips twitched. “Perhaps we should have spent more time in the lingerie shop today.”

  Irritated, she folded her arms over the nightgown her father had given her the year he’d died. She was on the graveyard shift that year at Christmas and he’d thought it was funny. Marie had, too, and now she kept it because it was from her dad.

  Besides, she didn’t want to think about the lingerie shop. Never before had she had a man with her when she picked out bras and panties. Of course, never before had a man picked out more than half of what she bought. That was a little unsettling, knowing that no matter what she wore on this trip, he would be able to imagine exactly what kind of underwear she was wearing beneath it.