“Gwyneth Mallorey?” Rick repeated, frowning.
“That’s right. You wanted to know, so now you can tell Sam the good news. Bye.”
“Walt—”
With a click the line went dead.
“Bloody hell,” Richard muttered. Yes, he knew that if Samantha did anything behind his back it would be with Walter. And no, he didn’t like that Barstone knew more about her than he did, or probably ever would. Hence his wanting to be in on any exchanges of information between them.
Neither, though, did he want to be in the position of having to tell Samantha that one of her clients was throwing a tantrum and expected the president of Jellicoe Security to be at her beck and call. And next week they were to attend a charity dinner at the Malloreys’ house. Dammit. He could buy and sell the Malloreys, and Sam was now in the position of being subservient to them.
Perhaps her objections to security work were about more than boredom and routine, and setting herself up for a fall with her former thieving compatriots. Now it was about his life, and her place among his acquaintances and business partners. Rick Addison’s live-in girlfriend who installed security cameras.
It definitely made her work for the museum look better. Those jobs, though, also had the potential to be much more dangerous to her physical well-being than the security work. None of it was just about her ego alone any longer, because it involved him, as well.
So was he willing to allow her to put herself in danger in order for him to avoid being the security guard’s boyfriend? Or was it even his call to make? The logical part of him, as well as the one that knew Samantha, said no. The part that remembered he was Richard Addison, the fourteenth Marquis of Rawley and a man who’d worked hard to be where he was and to be thought of in the manner he was, said yes.
Still chewing on how he was going to tell her about Gwyneth’s latest demands without causing an argument or looking like he was interfering in one of her jobs, he sat down again to finish his correspondence. One thing at a time. And damn Walter. Samantha wasn’t the only former lawbreaker who had some skill at manipulating the people around her.
Thankfully Richard knew a little something about negotiation himself. He just hoped he knew enough.
Tom Donner opened the door when Samantha rang the front bell. “Hi,” she said, keeping her expression cool and confident. “Nice shirt.” Either he’d been working on a car, or somebody had run over him with a lawnmower.
“Thanks. What do you want?” he returned.
“Is Olivia home?”
“You’re kidding me, right?” He put a hand on the door frame, the bear guarding his den from what—the cat, she supposed.
“No. She called me. I’m helping her with something.”
His eyes narrowed. “Anatomy Man?”
She nodded. “That’s confidential, between me and my client,” she said aloud.
He blew out his breath. “Okay. She’s in the living room with some of her friends.”
Samantha slipped past him and strolled into the living room. Though she and Rick and the Donners had shared more than a couple of outings and dinners, she’d actually been inside their house only once before. Luckily she remembered the layout, because she wasn’t about to ask Donner where the living room was.
“Hi, Livia,” she said with a smile.
Two girls were seated on the couch, and another two on the floor in front of them, all of them laughing over a video game where the goal was apparently to dress up and get a date to the prom. The tallest of them, blue-eyed and with cropped blonde hair, stood up and came over to hug her. “Aunt Sam! Did you find it already?”
“Not yet. I wanted to ask you a couple of questions. Are your friends in your class, too?”
She nodded. “Everybody, this is Sam Jellicoe. She’s like a private detective. Aunt Sam, this is Tiffany, and Emma, and Haley.”
“Hi, guys,” Samantha said, giving them a half wave. Her and kids. It was like confronting Martians. She’d never even been a kid, really. Pocket-picking lessons had started the week after her mom had kicked Martin out and he’d taken her along with him.
“Are you really dating Rick Addison?” the darkest-haired of the girls, Emma, asked.
“I am.”
“Awesome.”
“Pause the game, Haley,” Livia instructed. “We need to pay Sam, and then she’s going to help get Anatomy Man back.”
Great. Now she could rob piggy banks. “You don’t need to pay me. We’ll call it a family courtesy.”
“Are you sure? We have twenty dollars each.”
Eighty bucks. And she’d taken Monets with less hesitation. “I’ll add up my expenses at the end,” she hedged, not wanting to insult them, “but I’m pretty sure I’ve got it covered. So tell me what you know about Clark.”
“Miss Barlow was so pissed,” Haley observed, hitting a button on the cordless game controller. “And then Principal Horner came in and yelled at her right in front of the class.”
“He didn’t yell at her,” Olivia countered. “But he wasn’t happy, either.”
“I’m glad it’s gone,” Tiffany said, swishing her long blonde hair. “That Anatomy Man was so gross. And the boys kept peeling his chest off and pulling out his guts.”
“So he was pretty realistic-looking, huh?”
“Too realistic. I’m just glad it didn’t have a winkie.”
“Hi, Sam.”
She looked over her shoulder as the middle Donner offspring, Mike, crossed the edge of the living room, two other boys behind him. “Mike. How are you?”
“Good. Is Uncle Rick here?”
“No, just me.”
“She’s investigating Anatomy Man,” Olivia offered. “We hired her.”
“Oh.” He gave a half grimace as the boys bunched to a stop. “Well, good luck. Livi, tell Dad that I’m going to David’s for dinner.”
“You tell him, Mike.”
“Can’t. We’re already late.” He yanked on the nearest boy’s arm. “Let’s go.”
The other boy gawked at her. “She—”
“See you later, Sam.”
Samantha waved. “Bye, Mike.”
She turned back around as the boys left the room. Hm. Interesting. After a second she realized that the girls were all giggling about the boys, and she shook herself. “What grade is Mike in?”
“Tenth. He’s a sophomore.”
“So he doesn’t go to your school.”
Olivia shook her head. “No. He goes to Leonard High School.”
“How far is that from your school?”
“It’s right across the street.”
“The high school kids are supposed to stay off our campus,” Tiffany put in, “but they always walk across the baseball field at lunchtime and stuff.”
So she could add the entire population of Leonard High School to her list of suspects. She’d had to scam a security guard to reach Miss Barlow’s classroom. A kid would probably have an easier time of it, especially during school hours, and especially if maybe he had a sibling on campus. The question was, would a teenager have the nerve to make off with Anatomy Man in broad daylight? Or could they have gotten into the main building at night after taping the classroom door open? Whatever the answer was, she had the abrupt feeling that Mike Donner knew something about it.
“Aunt Sam, do you want to play Prom with us?”
She looked at the television screen, where the game waited to resume, then at the fresh faces of the four ten-year-old girls looking at her. “Sure. I’ll play for a couple of minutes.” She still needed to go for her run, but these kids kind of fascinated her. They seemed so…innocent, something she’d never been. And maybe they’d say something that could help her unravel the mystery of Clark the Anatomy Man.
Rick came into the bedroom as Samantha finished stripping off her clothes. She was glad he’d opted out of immediate post-run sex; not only was she pretty sure she was stinky, but after five miles along the shore of Lake Worth she felt pooped. Not
much more clearheaded, but definitely pooped.
“You’re very shiny,” he said in his smooth British accent.
She laughed between her subsiding huffs and puffs. “What I am is sweaty. Stand back; I may be lethal.”
“I’ve never doubted that.” He gestured her toward the bathroom. “I have some information for you. Do you want it pre-or post-shower?”
“Is it life-threatening?” she asked, wondering if any other couples regularly started their twenty questions games by asking that. Probably not. Trying to level out her breathing, Samantha turned on the shower.
“No, not life-threatening,” he answered, hopping backward onto the counter as she tested the water and then stepped inside. Ahh. Showers were why humans qualified as civilized.
“Well, that’s a nice change, isn’t it?” She dumped shampoo onto her palm and went to work on her hair. “Hey, can we skip the Bahamas tonight? I ran across Hans when I came into the house, and he mentioned something about spaghetti. I love his spaghetti.” And she also wanted to drive by Livia’s school and see how hard it would be for an amateur to sneak in after hours.
“I would never presume to separate a woman from her pasta.”
She chuckled again. This was much better than when he’d been testy earlier. Not that she didn’t enjoy arguing with him, but she liked to know what they were fighting about. And tomorrow she’d promised to show him her garden sketches. Yipes. “Okay, what’s the information?” she asked, before a panic attack could hit.
Rick’s figure shifted outside the frosted glass of the shower wall. “It can wait. I’m fantasizing right now.”
“Come in here and say that.” Sex would distract her. Sex with Rick would distract anybody.
“In all fairness, my love,” his deep voice drawled, “if we have sex and then I tell you the news, you’ll be mad at me twice over.”
That did not sound good. Samantha wiped shampoo off her face and leaned out of the door. “Then stop fantasizing and tell me, or I’ll be mad at you a half-dozen more times just for the hell of it.”
Rick gazed at her for a moment. “Walter called me looking for you. Gwyneth Mallorey wants you to be there when they install the cameras at her house, to make certain the walls don’t get damaged.”
Great. More fun for Jellicoe. “Okay. Why is this making me mad? Because Stoney told you? That’s between him and me.” And Stoney would hear about it. She didn’t call Rick’s ex to give Patty tidbits about Rick’s business dealings.
His eyebrows drew together. “It makes you mad because she’s treating you like a lay person.”
“She hired me. I work for her.” Samantha blinked away a water droplet and tried to think like Rick. “You don’t like that she’s ordering me around, so you figure I won’t like it, either. Right?”
“Partially. Good enough.” He stood again, and pulled his gray T-shirt off over his head. “No reason to hold off on the sex, then.”
Samantha pushed her palm against his bare chest as he approached, keeping him at arm’s length. “No way, Brit. What’s bugging you?” He was wearing his you’re-not-the-boss-of-me face, so she went over it again herself. “Let’s see. Rick hears that some woman is trying to order me around. Being a knight in shining armor for real, he doesn’t like that I answer to anybody but him.”
“That is not the—”
“Hush. I’m being you. Samantha and I are a couple,” she went on, assuming his accent, “and treating her badly equals treating me badly. If Sam’s a servant, I’m a servant. And wait a minute, I’m much better than these blighters. I could swat them like bugs.” From his darkening expression, she was on to something. “You think that she put me in a position that makes you look bad, don’t you?”
“I never said any such thing.”
“But you thought it, didn’t you?” Fucking wonderful. Work she didn’t particularly like but that he considered safe was acceptable to him, except that he didn’t like when she contracted with people who moved in his circle. Removing her hand, Samantha retreated into the shower.
“Samantha.”
“Gee, it must suck to be you,” she continued, going back to washing her hair. “All powerful and stuck with somebody who drags you down. It’s even funnier when you think that if I used my ill-gotten gains I could buy and sell some of these people, too.”
He yanked the shower door open again. “No, I don’t like it when some wife of a wholesale refrigerator manufacturer thinks she can make herself feel more important by asking ridiculous things of you.” Rick unfastened his belt and jeans and shoved them down, kicking out of them. “You’re with me, and you’re doing security work to ease your conscience and my blood pressure.”
“My conscience is just fine, thank you very much.”
“My blood pressure, then.”
Rick stepped into the shower, closed the door behind him, and grabbed both sides of her face. Kissing her hard, he pressed her back against the far wall. His blood pressure seemed pretty good, because it was obviously all heading away from his brain. Samantha moaned as his palms grazed her slick breasts and then came around for more.
He trailed his mouth down her chin to her throat, where he licked and nibbled until her legs felt ready to give out. Every time she tried to touch him, slide her palms down his chest, he elbowed her hands out of the way. God, it frustrated the hell out of her when he did that, making sex all about her, mainly because she liked the knowledge that she drove him as crazy as he drove her.
His mouth closed over her left breast, his tongue teasing at her nipple. “Rick,” she rasped, “you had me at ‘blood pressure.’ Stop fooling around.”
When he chuckled, the sound reverberated into her chest. The sensation practically gave her an orgasm right there. And then he slid a hand down her belly, through her curls, and curved a finger up inside her. She gasped, throwing her head back and nearly braining herself on the toiletry shelf in the corner.
“Sorry,” he murmured, turning his attention to her other breast. “I forget my own power sometimes.”
“You lying British bastard,” she growled, finally pushing past his arms to slide her hands around his shoulders. She dug in with the pads of her fingers, holding him close against her, skin to skin, warm water cascading over both of them.
“I want you, Sam,” he said, pushing against her hold to raise his head and take her mouth again. “I always want you.”
“There’s probably something wrong with us,” she panted in agreement, shifting to tangle her fingers through his damp black hair. He’d let it grow out a little; not enough to be considered shaggy, but stylishly so that the ends brushed the collar of his suit jacket. She liked it like that. A lot.
Rick swept his hands down her back, cupped her bottom, and lifted her up. Samantha laughed again, sweeping her legs around his hips and locking her ankles as he shoved her against the shower wall again, impaling her with his cock. God, she loved when he did that, like he couldn’t stand the delay of foreplay and teasing and just wanted her.
“I don’t know about something being wrong with us,” Rick returned, beginning his rhythmic humping. “Everything feels pretty damned good to me.”
“I have to agree with that.” Breathing hard, losing the power of speech, Samantha leaned her damp cheek against Rick’s and kissed his ear as she held on to him. Slowly she drew tighter and tighter, reveling in the feel of his body against hers, inside hers, until with a half shriek she came.
“There you go,” he breathed, lowering his head to her shoulder and thrusting faster. A minute later he gave a deep groan and convulsed against her.
“And there you go,” she said, kissing him again.
Slowly he lowered her feet back to the floor. Sliding his arms around her, he held her close. Samantha smiled, listening to the hard beat of his heart against hers. This was it—the thing. The warmth and safety Rick gave to her. The thing she’d never had until she’d met him, and now didn’t think she could breathe without. Whatever the thing
was that she provided him—and she still wasn’t entirely certain what it was—she knew very well how she felt about Rick Addison.
“I love you,” she murmured, kissing his shoulder.
“I love you.”
“And now I have to get dressed and go see Gwyneth Mallorey.”
With obvious reluctance he released her to wash the remaining suds out of her hair. “To quit?” he suggested.
“To tell her that my being there will cost her an additional thousand bucks, and then to stand there while my guys install her security cameras.”
“Mm hm. That’s good, but maybe you shouldn’t work for people we socialize with.”
“Then I’ll have to take more jobs from Stinky Pete the Sausage Man and Bob the Builder.” Eyeing him, she shut off the water and led the way out of the shower. “My ego’s okay with this, Rick. If yours isn’t, that’s not my problem.”
“I know. I’m just trying to figure out how I’m going to respond when Gwyneth stands up and publicly compliments your work in assembling her security system.”
Samantha frowned as she picked up a towel and tossed him a second one. “Say that you hope my system works as well for her as her husband’s refrigerator has worked for us.”
His sensuous lips twitched. “That might serve.”
“You work for a living too, you know. Somebody could just as easily compliment their plumbing joists from Kingdom Fittings, and you’d have to say thank you.”
“It’s not the same thing.”
“Yes, it is. And I’m good at what I do. So stop worrying about how you’ll look around me, or stop being around me.” She wrapped the towel around her hair and headed for the bedroom. “Besides, don’t forget that one day it might not be about security alarms. One day Detective Frank Castillo might come by with handcuffs and arrest me for stealing a Klimt or a Monet. You’d be better off spending some time thinking about how you’d respond to that.”
He took her elbow. “Don’t even jest about it.”
“I’m not jesting. If you’re worried about PR, Rick, I’m not the best choice for you to have around. I thought you would have realized that by now.”
A Touch of Minx Page 5
