“Rick,” she moaned, shifting her hands to his arse. Lowering his head beside hers, he let loose, shoving in and out until, with a hard shudder and a groan, he came.
“Your tie clip’s digging into my stomach,” Samantha said after a moment, her voice deeper with amusement and her breathing still hard.
“Apologies.” He shifted, his knee lowering onto air. “Da—”
They thudded onto the wide floor of the limousine, him on the bottom. Samantha, curled catlike across his chest, shook with laughter. “You are so smooth,” she chortled.
“Shut up.”
The intercom buzzed. “Sir? Uh, Miss Sam? Is everything all right?”
Richard lifted his foot, smashing his heel onto the arm console. “We’re fine. Carry on.”
“I’m glad you didn’t unroll the window or open the door, doing that,” Samantha said, shifting upright to pull up her dress.
“And I’m glad nobody put an elbow through one of the Hogarths,” he returned, chuckling as he lifted his hips to pull his trousers up.
“Where’s my damn underwear?” Samantha, shoving the skirt of her dress back down to her thighs, crawled to the front of the passenger compartment.
He finished zipping. “I didn’t see where it landed.” A moment later he spied the red scrap, hung over the wrapped corner of one of the paintings. Richard leaned over and snagged it for her. “Here you go.”
“Thanks. Now I’ll only have to buy six replacements this week.”
“You haven’t misplaced a pair since we came to New York.”
“That was yesterday, Brit.”
Richard watched as she sat down and pulled up the thong, smoothing her dress down again. “Samantha?”
“Yes?”
“I love you.”
She crawled back over to sit next to him, kissing the corner of his mouth. “I love you, too.”
He smiled. He couldn’t help it. She’d said it a handful of times over the past two months, but rarely enough that it still felt fragile and precious and new. He would have liked it more if she had said it first, but one thing at a time. “And you’re certain nothing’s troubling you? You didn’t see an old partner casing the joint or something, did you?”
Samantha snorted. “‘Casing the joint’? Sometimes I think you speak thieves’ lingo better than you speak American.”
“Yes, sometimes I push my own boat out.”
“You do what?”
“Outdo myself. I certainly speak better English than you.”
“That’s debatable.” She sat back on the seat again, taking his hand to pull him up beside her. “Nothing’s troubling me. But I am curious—what did you tell your minions about me walking into your office in my maternity getup earlier? Did they freak?”
He had gotten a few looks when he’d returned to his office, but he’d be damned if he was going to explain Samantha away. It had been rather amusing, actually. “You nearly gave me a heart attack, but I don’t think anyone else was affected.”
“Did I scare you?” she asked, digging into her tiny purse for a mirror to check her hair. “Me, or me having kids with you? Or you having kids?”
For a long moment Richard gazed at her. Generally he could at least read her mood, but tonight she was being difficult. “I refuse to answer that question on the grounds that any answer might prevent me from having more sex with you tonight.”
“Oh, come on. You’ve never once mentioned it, and I know you have to have thought about it. Doesn’t the Marquis of Rawley need an heir or something?”
“Of course I’ve thought about it.” He pulled her across his lap and kissed her. “And I’m not answering tonight,” he said, then resumed kissing her before she could say anything else. It was a cheap ploy, but he had absolutely no intention of telling her tonight that yes, he did want children, and yes, he did want her to be their mother. She’d be gone without a trace before dawn.
“Chicken.”
“Call me anything you wish, Samantha,” he said, keeping an arm about her waist, “but don’t think I don’t know exactly what you’re doing.”
“Wiggling on your lap and trying to give you a woody again?”
“At best you’re trying to distract me from asking you more about your very odd behavior at the auction, and at worst you’re trying to pick a fight so you can vanish somewhere tonight without having to provide an excuse.”
She stilled for a bare second, but it was enough. Enough to send a shaft of ice through his chest. Bloody hell.
“Okay,” she finally said, sagging back against him. “I thought I saw somebody I recognized.”
“Who?”
“You don’t need to know that. But I thought maybe he could be after the Hogarth, which is why I wanted it to come home with us. So problem solved, nobody had to get shot or blown up for once, and here we are, shagging in the back of a limo. A pretty good end for the evening, if you ask me.”
“You might have told me, you know,” he said quietly, twining his fingers with hers, pleased that she’d finally spoken, and finally able to concede that he did feel some triumph at having figured her out. It didn’t happen often. “I’ve already promised not to go about reporting your old comrades to the police—as long as nothing of mine goes missing.”
He included her in his collection as well, but telling her that would only get him an elbow in the gut. The high value she placed on her independence was something else he’d been able to decipher about her, though that had been at the expense of several bruises.
“Hence my telling you about it now,” she said. “I’m working on being good. It’s not as easy as you might think.”
“I’m still not commenting on anything.”
“Okay, Switzerland.”
Richard grinned. “Let’s go back to the house, then, shall we?”
Samantha reached across him to press the intercom button. “Home please, Ben,” she said.
“We’ll be there in two minutes, Miss Sam.”
Richard mock-scowled. “Does he have us timed that well, or is he circling the block?”
With a snort Samantha kissed him again. “He was probably circling the gas station, hoping he wouldn’t run out of fuel before you did.”
At the responding tug low in his gut, Richard slipped his palm beneath the front of her dress to cup her right tit. “I’m not out of fuel yet, love.”
She laughed a little breathlessly, pressing against his hand. “I’m beginning to think you’re solar-powered.”
“In this case, I think it’s the moonlight.” Actually all it took to excite and arouse him was the sight, the scent, or the touch of Samantha Elizabeth Jellicoe. He would trade a couple of Hogarths for that, anytime.
There had to be something wrong with the two of them. After five months together, and with less than a week apart in all that time, they should have been past the arousal-at-sight stage. Samantha had read several of the relationship articles in the magazines she’d subscribed to for her office, and “Getting Over the Same-Old, Same-Old Slump” and “Passing the Ninety-Day Hurdle” made it pretty clear that she and Rick should have some intimacy issues to work through.
She shifted a little on the bed, Rick’s breath soft against her cheek. Issues—she and Rick definitely had some, but sex wasn’t one of them. Until now she’d never had a relationship that lasted more than a few weeks, but even so she was certain this couldn’t be typical. Every time she caught sight of Rick she wanted to throw herself on him, wrap her arms and legs around him, crawl inside him where she felt warm and wanted and safe.
Therefore lying to him and sneaking out of the house in the middle of the night couldn’t be a good thing at all. But until she found out what was going on with Martin—if that had been Martin and not some doppelgänger who’d by now be very confused about the note in his pocket—she wasn’t telling anyone anything.
Moving slowly and silently, Samantha extricated herself from beneath Rick’s right arm and slid from the bed. Out of habit sh
e always kept a pair of jeans, a shirt, and good running shoes under the nightstand or the edge of the bed, and she carried them into the bathroom and pulled them on in the dark. In the old days a sneak began when she reached the location; now it began in the bedroom at home. Great improvement there, Sam.
Once she’d made her way downstairs, she shut off the alarm and set it again, which gave her thirty seconds to get out the front door—a lifetime in thief world. She trotted down the townhouse’s short, narrow front steps and turned to walk north up Fifth Avenue. Even at nearly two o’clock in the morning cabs cruised, looking for passengers too drunk to drive home or too uneasy to take the subway at this hour.
At her first wave one of them dodged across the street and pulled to the curb. “Central Park at East Sixty-seventh Street,” she said, avoiding a tear in the black seat cushion as she sat back. It was only a couple of blocks; she could have walked it. But that would expose her to casual view longer, and leave her more open than she liked. There were some instincts she didn’t think she’d ever put behind her.
The cabdriver craned his neck around to face her through the Plexiglas barrier. “I hope you tip big for a trip that short, lady,” he rumbled in a heavy Ukrainian accent.
“That’ll depend on how polite you are,” Samantha returned smoothly, putting a touch of Manhattan in her accent. She knew the drill: not too nice, not too cranky—just enough conversation to not be remembered.
“Okay. My pleasure, Your Highness,” he said, sending her another annoyed glance in his mirror as he faced front again.
“That’s better.”
Traffic was as light as it ever got in Manhattan, and the creepy-crawlies who hid from daylight had come out to roam the sidewalks. She liked New York City at night even better than she did during the day. Decent people out at this hour were few and far between, and if they weren’t drunk or high, they were too worried about their own skins to look at anything outside their own very small circle of safety. And the rest of the midnight population had their own problems, real or imaginary, and couldn’t be bothered with anyone else’s unless they saw a benefit for themselves. She made certain it wasn’t profitable to mess with her.
Three minutes later the cab pulled over across from the Central Park side of the street. “How is this, Your Highness?”
The meter read $3.50, so she handed him a five and a one. “It’s perfect.”
He chuckled, pleased at the tip. “You want me to wait?”
“No. I’ll be a while.”
With a salute he pulled out into the light traffic. Samantha stood where she was for a minute. Even with a few light posts along the main walking paths, Central Park was one big, dark glob. One big, dark glob with her father in the middle of it.
For the first time since she’d climbed out of bed, Samantha allowed herself to think about why she was about to take a stroll through the east side of Central Park in the middle of the night. She shivered, not with fear, but with nerves. It was a damned good place for a ghost sighting; maybe under the circumstances a more populated rendezvous point would have been a better idea, after all. She waited for the traffic light, then crossed Fifth Avenue.
Get it together, Sam, she repeated to herself—her new mantra. With a last look up and down the avenue, she squared her shoulders and walked into the park.
She’d seen the bronze statue of Balto the famous sled dog once or twice over the years, his flanks rubbed smooth by countless little kids’ hands. Even in the dark it took her less than fifteen minutes to circle around the dog and pick her spot in the undergrowth on the south side of the clearing. Without checking her watch she knew she was about ten minutes early, and she leaned sideways against the nearest tree trunk to wait.
If not for the faint sounds of traffic she might have been in the wilds of New England. No thanks. She preferred her jungles urban, where even on the run you could get a burger without having to hunt it down and kill it first.
A pair of men crossed the path in front of her, close enough that she could have reached out and picked the nearer one’s pocket. From the bulge in the back of his waistband she could have liberated a pistol, too, but that wasn’t her style. Briefly she wondered whether he could be an undercover cop, patrolling the park. Either way, she wasn’t going to risk attracting his attention.
Her dad had used to call her a snob because she would only take the jobs in which the object to be stolen interested her—a rare painting, an antique, an ancient stone tablet. Even Martin, though, had his standards, and she’d never known him to carry a gun, either. Guns were for thugs who couldn’t get in and out of a place without being seen, he’d always said.
A couple of church bells chimed, not quite in unison, but clearly enough that she could make out two separate rings. Two o’clock. Go time.
A pair of rabbits meandered past, noses and ears twitching as they alternated between dumping rabbit pellets and checking the sky for owls. A speeding cyclist sent them hopping into the shrubbery. Samantha stayed in the deep shadows of the tree, unmoving.
Forty minutes later she’d waited for too long, seen another half dozen people, a scrawny-looking dog, and either a cat or a large rat pass by Balto, but no Martin Jellicoe. In the old days she would have waited ten minutes past the designated meeting time and then bolted, figuring the rendezvous had been compromised. But she hadn’t seen him in six years. And even when he didn’t show on time, she couldn’t make herself leave. Maybe he was as hesitant about this as she was.
She blew out her breath, and it fogged a little in the cool damp. “Where the hell are you, Martin?” she murmured, shifting. For Christ’s sake, he hadn’t seen her in six years, either, and she was his only kid.
Samantha frowned. If he hadn’t died three years ago, he’d certainly been in a position to track her down well before now. So why hadn’t he? Where the hell had he been, and what had he been up to? While she’d still traveled on the dark side she’d heard about nearly every cat burglary pulled, and nothing had sounded like the work of Martin Jellicoe. Again, though, she’d never expected to hear any such thing, and she’d never tried to match anything to his familiar fingerprints.
She heard footsteps down the path, and stilled again. Her heart pounded, though by now she wasn’t certain whether she was more nervous or angry. But the guy who came down the path had about half a foot on her dad. He wore a ragged coat that sagged on his thin frame, and even from the far side of the clearing she could smell the stale booze on him. He crossed past her, mumbling something about Batman.
When she finally gave in and checked her watch, it was nearly three. “Fuck,” she muttered, slipping out of the undergrowth and back onto the path. Either that hadn’t been Martin after all, or something was up. And in her experience, “somethings” were never good news.
Chapter 5
Wednesday, 3:01 a.m.
A horn blared down on the street. Richard blinked, rousing reluctantly from a deep-sea-fishing dream which featured Samantha as a bare-breasted mermaid. The horn sounded again, and he turned over. “Bloody Yanks,” he mumbled.
No response.
He opened one eye again, looking across the wide bed to the nightstand beyond. Across the wide, empty bed. “Samantha?” he called, sitting up and squinting in the direction of the dark master bathroom. Wide awake now, he rolled naked out of bed and shrugged into his blue dressing robe.
Samantha had been semi-nocturnal for as long as he’d known her, but her late-night wanderings seemed to increase when something troubled her. Whatever she’d said during and after the auction, and whatever he’d pretended not to notice, something troubled his former cat burglar.
Tying the robe closed, he left the bedroom to make a quick check of his office and then the sitting room opposite. Hm. His next guess was a midnight snack, and he padded barefoot down the stairs to the ground floor. The kitchen was as dark and silent as the rest of the house.
Unless she had a reason for sneaking, Samantha didn’t make much of an effor
t to remain hidden in her own house. Frowning, his heart beating a little faster despite his resolve not to jump to any conclusions, he headed into the downstairs sitting room. Nothing but the new Hogarths, propped against the back of the…
One package leaned against the couch. Ice swept down his spine. A quick turn about the room verified it—only one painting. Abruptly Samantha’s disappearance wasn’t just mildly exasperating. Missing Sam, missing painting. For a split second, he doubted her. Just as swiftly, though, he pushed the thought out of his mind. The two things might be connected, but she hadn’t taken the Hogarth. Heart and mind, he knew that about her.
Cursing, Richard charged back upstairs to pull on some clothes. As he dug into the wardrobe, he glanced into the mirror beside it. Reflected beneath the disheveled sheets was the bottom of Samantha’s side of the bed—sans the neat little pile of emergency clothing she always kept there.
Yanking on a pair of jeans, he half hopped into the bathroom. No sign, but since she hadn’t been wearing any jammies he didn’t quite know what he expected to find, other than perhaps one of her rare sticky notes on the mirror. Nothing marred the ceiling-high reflective surface.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck.”
For once in his life, he wasn’t sure what the devil he was supposed to do next. Someone had stolen from him. He needed to call the police. But until he knew where Samantha was and what her involvement might be, he couldn’t call the police.
Then he realized that he already had. As he strode past his nightstand, he noticed the small red light blinking on his phone. The silent alarm had been tripped. Since he resided there so infrequently, the security company would call Wilder downstairs to confirm a breach. Bloody hell.
Halfway down the stairs, the wail of sirens and the reflection of red and blue lights through the front windows began and grew louder and brighter. “Shit.”
“Sir!” Wilder met him in the foyer, the butler disheveled and wearing a plaid bathrobe over black pajama bottoms and matching slippers. “The alarm’s gone off. It showed a perimeter breach, so I confirmed on the phone that the police needed to be dispatched.”
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