Claimed

by Tracy Wolff

  Then he flung the door open and rushed inside like a crazy person. And all but bumped into the makeshift desk Isa had set up near the opening of the vault, a desk that held a laptop, a microscope and a small drawer of diamonds. She had one of the diamonds under the microscope, had obviously been studying it intensely when he’d barged in. Now she was studying him intensely.

  “You okay?” she asked, putting the diamond down and pushing back from the table.

  “Yeah, of course. I’m fine,” he said because, really, what else could he say? I freaked out because I thought you were going to steal from me? Or how about, I’m still freaking out because you’ve been alone in this vault for two hours and I don’t know if you’ve pocketed anything? Yeah, right, because either of those would go over so well. “I just wanted to check on your progress, to see if you’d found anything one way or another.”

  She laughed, even as she reached a casual hand out and rubbed his shoulder. “I know it’s nerve-wracking, especially with that article hanging over your head, but nothing of any value can be done in an afternoon, especially in a vault of this size, with this many diamonds. If you’re lucky, I’ll be able to discuss my findings on Wednesday, but more likely it’s going to be Thursday. And that’s only if I spend every working hour here while my substitute teaches at the GIA.”

  She didn’t sound bothered by that fact, but he was suddenly—overwhelmingly—swamped by guilt. Guilt for thinking, even for a second, that she was a thief. And guilt that she was working so hard to reassure him when he’d been suspecting terrible things about her. It didn’t seem fair. Not when he’d been the one to almost beg her to take this assignment. Of course, that was before he’d known she’d be left alone in the vault.

  Searching for something to say to diffuse the awkwardness he felt he glanced at the diamonds spread out on the table in front of her. Then stiffened because, well, honestly, they were small diamonds. Easy to lose, easy to fence. Easy to pretend away if things weren’t going her way.

  “Is there anything you need?” he asked as casually as he could. “Anything I can get for you?”

  “Not right now. Tomorrow I’ll need access to your labs, but for now I’m okay here if you have other stuff you want to do. You know, like run a company.” She smiled as she teased him.

  “Actually, I thought I’d hang out here for a while, if that’s okay with you. Just in case something comes up. You’re doing Bijoux a huge favor and I’d hate for you to have to wait for something you need.”

  “I’m actually good. I’m doing the serial number check right now and will probably be on that for the rest of the day so I really won’t have anything to report unless I find a stone with a mismatched number.” She put a hand on his shoulder, squeezing gently in what he assumed she thought of as support. “It’s nice of you to offer, but there’s nothing for you to do right now.”

  He didn’t like the way she stressed the word nice, as if he was missing something. Considering that was exactly what he was afraid of, it ratcheted up his suspicion, had him walking toward the end of the vault and retrieving a chair from the small display there. He carried it back to her, set it down a few feet from her desk. Then slid into it with an easy smile he was far from feeling.

  “Even so,” he said, pulling out his phone and pretending to be busy. “I’ve cleared the rest of my afternoon, so I’m at your service.”

  She shot him an odd look. “You’re seriously going to stay here the whole afternoon?”

  “The whole afternoon,” he agreed. And though he felt guilty for his suspicions, he still wasn’t moving. Not when she was trying so hard to get rid of him. And not when she was currently concentrating on some of the smallest diamonds in the vault. He didn’t like the looks of it and while he wasn’t stupid enough to tell her that, he also wasn’t stupid enough to leave her alone in here like a kid in an unsupervised candy store.

  Isa gave him a strange look as she settled back down at her desk and returned to work, but he pretended not to notice. Which was so much better than letting her see how nervous she made him...and on how many different levels.

  Fifteen

  Marc was acting weird. Not crazy, need-a-straitjacket weird or anything like that, but he was definitely a little off. She glanced at him out of the corner of her eye as she finally finished checking the last diamond in the current batch and placed it back in the blue velvet–lined drawer.

  He wasn’t looking at her, wasn’t paying attention to her at all. Which was fine—he was CEO of Bijoux, after all, and she was sure he had a lot of work to do, especially considering the allegations leveled at the company—but it still made her feel funny. As if she wasn’t important enough for him to pay attention to. Or, as he hadn’t made any move to touch her since he came into the vault, as if what had passed between them over the weekend had never happened.

  He hadn’t even risen to the bait when she’d used the word nice...which made her feel even more as though he wanted to forget making love to her.

  Having sex, she reminded herself a little bitterly as she carried the drawer back to its place and slid it into the long, slender opening in a wall that was covered with row after row, column after column, of just such drawers.

  The Bijoux vault was organized by size, color and clarity—pretty much like any vault she’d ever been in. Sticking with the smaller stones of lesser quality she moved to her right two columns and pulled out a drawer that was second from the top, then carried it back to her makeshift desk.

  Marc had yet to say anything, or even look up from his smartphone, where he was currently scrolling away like the weight of the world depended on how fast he moved his index finger. It annoyed her all over again—she didn’t need much attention, but something would be nice. A smile. A few careless sentences. An acknowledgment that they’d spent the entire weekend together, working and making love.

  She ended up slamming down the drawer on the desk a lot harder than she’d intended to.

  The sharp crack echoed through the room and for the first time since he’d settled in the chair next to her, Marc looked up with a frown. “Everything okay?” he asked.

  “Yes. Everything’s nice.” She stressed the word a second time, even knowing she was being something of a brat. But he was getting under her skin and though she knew it was her fault for letting him, she couldn’t help it. If all he’d wanted was a two-night stand, he could have said so, right? He’d had no problem saying it after the first time he’d crawled out of bed with her on Saturday morning. Why hadn’t he said something to the same effect this morning when he’d dropped her off? Something like, “I had a nice time, but with the work you’re doing for Bijoux, I really think we should keep it professional from here on out.”

  She probably would have snarled at him, would definitely have thought he was a douche. But then, she’d decided sometime in the past hour that he was a douche anyway, so it’s not as if he’d gained anything by playing his games. Whatever those games might be and whatever purpose he thought they might serve.

  She didn’t say anything as she got back to work, opening the drawer and pulling out a selection of diamonds in the quarter carat, slightly included range. As with the drawer she had just examined, these were some of the cheapest diamonds in the vault. While the drawer of them was worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, individually each was only worth a hundred or so.

  “Can I ask a question?” Marc asked, and she looked up to find him studying her intently.

  “Of course. That’d be nice,” she answered.

  His eyes narrowed to slits and she knew she’d pushed the nice thing as far as she would get away with. Which was fine, because the longer he went without calling her on it, the more like a spoiled brat she felt.

  “Why are you dealing with only the small diamonds? Shouldn’t you be looking at the bigger ones? If someone at Bijoux is playing fast and
loose with serial numbers and countries of origin, they’d be more likely to make a significant amount of money by passing off a large diamond as conflict free rather than a small one.”

  “You’d think so, but my colleagues’ and my experience has borne out the exact opposite to be true. Big diamonds are flashy, they draw more attention and so it’s harder to keep a fraud going for any length of time. There’s just too much scrutiny on stones over a carat, especially when they’re VVS1 or VVS2. Everyone wants a look at stones that are only very, very slightly included.

  “Whereas, with these stones, nobody pays much attention. They aren’t very glamorous and they aren’t worth very much money in the grand scheme of things, so people—jewelers, conflict-free experts, consumers—have a tendency to not pay as much attention to them. After all, who would go through the trouble of forging papers on a stone that’s barely worth a hundred bucks? Especially if they only stand to gain a couple extra dollars on it?”

  “Someone who’s faking it on thousands of stones,” he offered.

  “Yes. Or, more likely, hundreds of thousands. Then the money suddenly becomes a lot more worth it.”

  “Yeah, I guess. If you don’t mind selling your soul for a little profit.”

  He looked so disgusted that she couldn’t help laughing. “I think you’ve forgotten the basics of Human Greed 101,” she told him. “Not to mention the very foundations on which the diamond market functions.”

  “I wish.” He flashed her his first real smile of the afternoon. “So that’s why you’re concentrating on the small diamonds. Because it’s easier for someone to flip in a few fakes there than in the stones of significant size.”

  “Absolutely.” She looked at him curiously. “Why else would I be spending all my time with these stones when the right side of the vault is filled with so many more beautiful ones? Which, incidentally, I will be getting to. But not until after I deal with these.”

  He shrugged, grinned at her. “No rush. I want both of us to be completely satisfied as to the validity of my stones’ origins.”

  She nodded hesitantly, feeling a little like Alice tumbling down the rabbit hole as he shot her another blinding smile. Because this time when she settled back down to work, Marc didn’t ignore her. Instead, he lifted his head often and smiled at her. Offered to refill the water bottle that rested, forgotten, on the corner of her desk. It was as if he was a different man than the one she’d spent the past hour with and she couldn’t help wondering at the schizophrenic behavior. Especially when she’d convinced herself that his previous behavior had been because he wanted to make sure she got the hint about his intentions—or lack of intentions—about their relationship.

  She still wasn’t sure what was going on. After all, who wanted to waste their time on “nice” when they could be aiming for spectacular?

  She didn’t say anything to him, though, and he didn’t bring it up with her—at least not until it was well after dark and the rest of the company had closed around them.

  She was working to finish a drawer of half-carat stones and was hoping to get one more drawer done after that before calling it quits. But as she put the last VVS1 stone back into its drawer, Marc’s hand covered hers. For the first time she realized he’d put his phone away and his chair back and was pretty much just hovering over her.

  “I’ll put this bunch back,” he told her. “Why don’t you get your stuff together?”

  She glanced at her watch, surprised to find it was after nine. “Actually, I was hoping to do one more drawer before heading home. It shouldn’t take me long—”

  “Maybe not, but you look dead on your feet,” he said. “Whatever you still have to do will be here tomorrow.”

  She thought about protesting—she had a limited amount of time and a lot of ground to cover—but she wasn’t the only one who looked exhausted. He was hiding it well, but Marc looked like he, too, was feeling the effects of three nights without sleep.

  “Yes, all right,” she agreed. It only took her a couple of minutes to put her laptop away and gather the rest of her stuff. Then they walked out together, Marc making sure the vault was sealed behind them, the alarms and motion sensors all activated.

  They were out of the building and almost to her car in the parking lot before he spoke again. “What kind of takeout do you like?”

  “Takeout?” she parroted, the words so far from where her brain was that it took her a minute to process them.

  “Food?” he said, his voice deep and amused. “I figured we’d grab something to eat on the way back to your place.”

  “My place?” she echoed.

  He looked at her strangely, the warmth in his smile fading as he took in her total surprise at the suggestion. “Unless you’d rather not have a meal together?” he said, and she knew he was thinking about Saturday night, when she’d refused every overture he’d made to get her to eat with him.

  “No, no. Takeout would be nice.” This time, the word slipped out without her permission or attention.

  But he picked up on it—of course he did—his eyes narrowing as he asked, “What is it with you and your preoccupation with the word nice today?”

  She flushed a bright red, ducking her head as she tried to either avoid the question or figure out a way to answer him that didn’t make her sound like a complete crazy person. But he wasn’t having any of it, his fingers going to her chin and tilting her face up until her eyes met his.

  She didn’t say anything and neither did he and, of course, she cracked first. She always had when it came to him—how had she not remembered that until this moment? The way Marc noticed every small detail about her? The way he’d wait her out whenever he asked her uncomfortable questions, never getting bored or anxious, but rather pausing patiently for her to wrap her mind—and her courage—around whatever it was she wanted to say.

  “I just—” She broke off, shook her head. “Any chance we can just leave that alone for now?”

  He quirked a brow in that way that made her insane—with affection, with envy, with lust. “Pretty much no chance at all.”

  “Yeah, that’s what I figured.” She sighed heavily, shifting her weight. She shoved her free hand in her pocket. Anything and everything to kill time as she tried to figure out what she wanted to say. But in the end, though Marc hadn’t grown impatient, she certainly had and she just blurted out the truth. “You said last night was ‘nice.’”

  He looked baffled. “When did I do that?”

  “In your text message to me this morning. You said you’d had ‘a nice time.’”

  “And there’s something wrong with that?”

  Her embarrassment faded as annoyance took its place. “I don’t know, Marc. Why don’t we test it out? You take me home, make love to me, and then—on your way out the door—I’ll tell you how nice it was.”

  He didn’t say anything for long seconds, just stared at her as if she’d lost her mind. And maybe she had. At this point, she really couldn’t tell. All she knew was that she didn’t want him to drop his hand from her face, didn’t want him to stop touching her. Ever. And that was a huge problem considering the fact that she’d been promising herself all along that she wouldn’t fall for him again. That she wouldn’t let herself love him.

  “Seriously, sweetheart?” he said after a minute. He dropped his hand and she made some kind of noise at the loss of contact—half protest, half plea. He responded by wrapping her in his arms, pressing her body against his from shoulders to shins. “I was half-asleep and barely coherent and that’s what you’ve been holding against me all day? Do you think maybe you could cut a guy some slack?”

  When he said it like that, he made his words seem completely reasonable. But, still, before she got in any deeper, she needed to know. “You weren’t trying to blow me off? To distance yourself from me?”

  He lowered
his head, pressed kisses to her forehead, her cheeks, her mouth. “Does this feel like I’m trying to distance myself?”

  “No.” She shook her head. It felt kind of wonderful, actually. Familiar, but not. Safe, but not—in the best possible way.

  “Okay, then. Since that’s settled, why don’t you tell me what kind of takeout you want and I’ll swing by and get it on my way to your place. If I’m invited, that is?” He was grinning, his eyes bright with mischief as he teased her. But she could see the uncertainty there, too, lurking behind the easy facade. Almost as if he was as weirded out and nervous about this thing between them as she was. Almost as if he had as much to lose as she did.

  Just the thought had her breath catching in her throat, had her searching his face for signs of the same overwhelming feelings she was having. She found them in the crinkle of his eyes, in the soft corners of his smile, in the hand that wasn’t quite steady on her arm.

  And somehow the knowledge that she wasn’t alone made everything better. She’d loved Marc Durand once, with every beat of her heart, with every ounce of her being. Losing him had nearly killed her, which was why she’d sworn never to repeat the mistake. And yet, here she was, after several strong warnings to herself, in the middle of the fall all over again. It wasn’t a comfortable place to be, not by a long shot. But when he looked at her like that—all soft and sweet and involved—it wasn’t a bad place, either. It was actually a little wonderful.

  “I choose Greek,” she told him. “There’s a little place two blocks over from my house. It’s a hole-in-the-wall but the food is amazing.”

  “Greek it is, then. Text me the name and I’ll find it,” he replied, dropping one last, lingering kiss on her lips before pulling open her car door for her. “Drive safely.”

  She laughed. “Same old Marc.”