Billionaires Prefer Blondes

by Suzanne Enoch

  “Right away, sir.”

  Nothing had fallen out of his control yet, but if his life with Samantha continued as it was, he was going to have to face some unpleasant facts. The major one seemed to be that as much as he liked his independence, his ability to simply appear wherever and whenever one of his companies needed a kick in the pants or some fine-tuning or plain morale-boosting, his personal life had become of paramount importance. To quote Tom Donner, he wasn’t a one-man band any longer. Perhaps if he’d thought or felt that way three years ago, he would still be married to Patricia.

  Patricia, though, had been a business accessory—the wife on his arm for social events and hosting parties. Through no fault of her own, Patricia hadn’t spun him around, lit him on fire, or made his bones melt. For that he’d needed Samantha. And since he wasn’t willing to give her up, and since he wasn’t willing to simplify his holdings, he needed assistance.

  His phone rang again. “Addison.”

  “Sir,” the receptionist said, “I have a John Stillwell on the phone for you?”

  “Splendid. Hold on to him for a moment while I find an empty office.”

  “Karen Tyson is out of the office today, sir.”

  “Good. Put it through in there in two minutes.”

  He hung up and turned to the dozen attorneys quarreling at the other end of the room. “Ladies and gentlemen, order some lunch and calm down a little. This deal will be made, and we’ll all be reasonably happy about it.”

  Across the hallway from his own office he found personnel manager Karen Tyson’s door. As he entered the room, the phone rang. “John?” he asked.

  “Lord Rawley,” the crisp voice returned. “I mean to say, Rick. Good afternoon.”

  “John, I have two overdue profit reports from companies based in London. If you can get them to me by Sunday, I intend to offer you a position as my personal assistant. And I don’t mean someone to fetch me tea. Your duties would be similar to what they are now, but a bit…higher-profile. In addition, it would involve more travel and picking up overflow details from my personal business. Think of it as being my chief of staff.”

  “Sir, I don’t know what to say.”

  “I’ve been paying attention to your work at Sunrise, and Matumbe speaks very highly of you there. To start with, the position pays two hundred thousand pounds per annum, plus living expenses. You do have a valid visa, do you not?”

  “Yes. Yes, I do.”

  “If you’re interested, then I hope to see you in New York on Sunday.”

  “Thank you, L—Rick. I will be th—”

  “Just a moment, John,” Richard interrupted. “Are you married?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Seeing anyone?”

  “Not at the moment.”

  “And do you have a problem with spending what may well amount to a majority of your time traveling on short notice?” After all, he was calling in assistance to help him manage his businesses so he could manage his private life. It would be unfair to expect someone to give up his own in exchange. And that was another revelation of thought for which he could thank Samantha. “Honestly, John. Don’t say what you think I want to hear.”

  “I do not have a problem with traveling, sir. If I may say, this is exactly the kind of opportunity I’ve been hoping for in working for one of your companies.”

  Richard cracked a smile. “The sycophancy isn’t necessary unless I specifically request it. Sarah in the London office there has all of the information you’ll require.”

  “I’ll take care of it, Rick.”

  “I hope so.”

  That was one thing taken care of. Or three, actually. Now all he needed to do was stop letting the attorneys across the way keep throwing up roadblocks so he could get to work. His stomach rumbled, and he looked at the clock on the desk. Damn. Pulling out his cell phone, he hit speed dial number one.

  “Hola.”

  “How hungry are you?”

  “I’m actually already eyeing a pizza place,” Samantha’s smooth voice came. “How long do you think you’ll be?”

  “Too long. I think I’m going to order in.”

  “Don’t forget to feed your minions.”

  He smiled. “Yes, love. I’ve already told them to find some crumbs. I’ll see you in a few hours.” That was his Sam, professional criminal and champion to overworked office staff everywhere.

  “Okay.” She paused. “How’s it going today?”

  “Fairly well. I’m currently threatening to drop the Manhattan and buy another hotel instead.”

  She chuckled. “I’m never playing Monopoly with you. See you tonight.”

  This time he waited for a second. When she didn’t continue, he tightened his jaw a little. “I love you.”

  “I love you, too, studmuffin.”

  Patience, Rick, he reminded himself. Eventually she would feel easy enough to say it first, and without prompting. Both of their lives had changed dramatically since they’d met, and they were both still figuring out how to be partners. And if he had things his way, which he intended to do, they would have a very long time together to figure everything out.

  Samantha folded over her pizza crust and jammed the end of it into her mouth. Across the table from her, Stoney took dainty bites of his Italian garden salad. The two of them probably looked like the Odd Couple from Hell.

  “I notice you didn’t tell Addison that you punched Doffler,” her former fence said after a moment.

  “I’m shopping today, not chasing hoods.” She glanced around the half-full pizzeria. “Besides, Doffler shouldn’t have said I lost my edge.”

  “So what are you trying to do, then—find Martin, or keep up your rep? Because last time I checked, you were retired. That’s what the guy you just talked to on the phone thinks, anyway.”

  “I am retired. But I’m designing security for people. I don’t want the cats and cons thinking I’m all soft now and they can hit the places I’ve wired.”

  “Mm-hm. So it’s business, not ego.”

  “Eat your damn salad.”

  “I thought so.”

  Ignoring the smugness in his voice, Samantha pulled out a piece of paper from her pocket. “I didn’t punch Nadia Kolsky or Merrado.” She’d felt like it, out of frustration if nothing else. Somebody had to know where Martin was. And from what Stoney had been telling her, not too many of Martin’s old acquaintances would necessarily care to do him the favor of keeping him hidden.

  “That’s because Merrado’s bigger than King Kong.”

  “Okay, what about fences?” she asked, scratching out some more notes to herself. “I know Martin used you most, but some of the stuff he snatched was just bargain basement.”

  “Those guys don’t tend to last very long in the business. I’ll make a couple of calls after lunch and see if I can track a few of them down.”

  She took another bite, musing as she did so. “Can I ask you a question?”

  “As long as it’s not about you and Addison.”

  “Why did I end up so different from Martin?”

  Stoney snorted. “If I knew that, honey, it would have saved me a lot of arguments. Martin liked to blame it on your mom.”

  Samantha stopped mid-bite. “Why?”

  “She was a smart lady. He kind of conned her into marrying him. When he couldn’t figure you out, I guess she was easy to blame. And he wasn’t always a snatch-and-grab man.”

  “I know. He used to be the best second-story guy in the business. He just—”

  “He got older.”

  Samantha froze at the low voice over to her left. Her heart actually stopped beating—or it felt that way. Stoney’s dark face had taken on a gray tinge, but she still didn’t want to look over at the neighboring table. Why hadn’t she known? Why hadn’t she sensed that he’d walked through the door and sat down beside them?

  “Cat got your tongue, Sam?”

  Get it together, Sam, she shouted at herself. With a deep breath she turned her he
ad. “Hello, Martin.”

  He sat there, looking exactly like he had the last time she’d sat across a table from him. No, not exactly, she amended. More gray in his light brown hair, deeper lines across his forehead and around his mouth. And he was a little thinner. But the man who sat at the white plastic table was unmistakably Martin Jellicoe.

  “What—” Stoney rasped shakily. “How—”

  Brown eyes slid over in the fence’s direction and then returned to Samantha. He smiled, the smooth, confident expression that she remembered. “Surprise.”

  “What the hell is going on, Martin?” Stoney managed, his voice low and rumbling with emotion.

  “I’ll get to you in a minute, Stoney,” Martin returned. “First, what were you about to say, Sam? That Martin got too old to pull top jobs? That he became a glorified purse snatcher?” He leaned closer, lowering his voice. “I guess I’m still good enough to come back from the dead, eh?”

  “I don’t understand,” Samantha finally whispered, her voice shaking beyond her ability to control it.

  He clapped a hand on the table’s surface. “I hope you’re not always this slow on the uptake,” he said with a chuckle. “What’s important here? I’m alive. Do you really want to waste time asking me why and how?”

  “Yes, I do. Apparently you’ve had a little longer to process your not being dead than I have.” Samantha swallowed. In a sense, he was right. Under the circumstances, with him here and a missing painting, she needed to catch up, and fast. “I watched your funeral, Martin.”

  “You thought you did. And that’s your mistake. I told you not to come anywhere near me if I ever got nabbed. You always were soft, Sam. Or I thought you were. How much do you siphon off from that Brit every month? A mil? More? I saw you’d moved in with him and I thought, ‘That’s my girl.’ Maybe you did learn everything I tried to teach you.”

  “I don’t want to talk about that,” Samantha shot back, shock beginning to warm into anger once he brought Rick into the equation. “And if you’re delivering more lessons here, then the why of you being here is important. You didn’t die in prison, but you couldn’t have gotten out on your own. Somebody would have mentioned a jailbreak on the news, otherwise. And then there’s the little problem of where you’ve been for the past three years. You couldn’t even send a postcard?”

  “I’ve been here and there. Busy. And speaking of lessons, if we had one rule you never broke, it was that we stay out of each other’s business. You’re stepping pretty far into mine right now.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?” Stoney blurted. “Do you know what you put this girl through? How the hell—”

  “Lay off the Hogarth. Both of you. And quit looking for me. Your British boy hasn’t lost anything. Insurance’ll cover the painting.”

  “You set me up.” Samantha stood, leaning her clenched fists on the table in front of her, every muscle longing to hit Martin over and over again—not just because he’d stolen from Rick, but because he’d been alive for the past three years and hadn’t bothered to say anything to his own daughter. “I tried to set up a rendezvous with you, and you used it to set me up.”

  “Be glad it was me you tried to meet with. Remember to keep your flank covered, Sam. You left your golden gander totally open to attack, because you were curious. How many times have I warned you about that?”

  “You reappear to give me more lessons in thieving? What about being my damned dad for a minute?” That was exactly it, she realized; Martin had always positioned himself as her superior and her instructor. Apparently a six-year absence hadn’t changed that at all. Christ. Her head felt like it was spinning right off her neck. And if anyone would take advantage of that, it was smooth, the-end-justifies-the-means Martin.

  He snorted. “You’re just mad because I outmaneuvered you. Come on. You can’t begrudge your old dad one little egg out of that nest.”

  “When the cops blame me for taking it, I can.” And now abruptly they were having another job argument, like it had been six days and not six years since they’d last spoken. “And since they’re looking at me, the insurance company won’t pay off. If I get arrested again, they could even go after Rick for fraud.”

  “So you’ll have to find a new goose. You’ve been with him for what, six months? You’ve—”

  “Five,” she corrected stiffly.

  “Whatever. You’ve probably squeezed everything out of him you can. He’ll notice the furniture’s missing, eventually.”

  She didn’t try to explain her relationship with Rick. Martin wouldn’t get it, anyway. Whatever the hell he had going on, though, she wasn’t going to take the fall for it. She knew how he played the game. Apart for six years or not, some things never changed. The one lesson he was best at, the one he’d taught her first and repeated most often, was to look out for yourself first. Which meant she had better do the same—except that in her new world, that included Rick. “Who hired you for the Hogarth?” she asked.

  “That’s none of your business. Just do your shopping and partying and I’ll go on with my thing.”

  “Until you decide to reappear in the middle of my shit again? I don’t think so, Martin.” Forcing her muscles to relax, she sat down again. “You could have grabbed the painting from Sotheby’s. You wanted to take it from my house, and you waited until I went out to meet you before you made your play. So you tell me what the hell’s going on, Dad. You think I stepped into the middle of your shit? You just stomped all over mine. And I don’t like it.”

  The charm left his gaze for a moment. “Watch your mouth, Sam. I don’t have to explain anything to you.”

  “It seems like a fair question to me, Martin,” Stoney put in. “She could go to jail.”

  “That won’t happen,” Martin said dismissively, reaching over to take one of Samantha’s slices of pizza and Mr. In-Control again. “If you thought it would, you’d be on your way to Paris or Milan.”

  Not if it meant abandoning Rick—and especially when her flight would make things worse for him. “There has to be a reason,” she said slowly, “that you would vanish into thin air and then decide to reappear now, when Stoney and I didn’t even have a clue that you were alive, much less still in the business.” Flattery worked miracles on some of her marks; she didn’t see why it couldn’t work on Martin.

  “Let’s just say some people saw that it would benefit them more to have me out of prison than to try to keep me behind bars.”

  He had escaped from various facilities at least twice that she knew of. Who would find it more advantageous to have him running around free instead of keeping him in tougher and thereby more expensive facilities? Someone whom he was costing money. “You’re working for the government?” she whispered, unable to keep herself from glancing around the restaurant.

  “Smart as ever, aren’t you, Sam? It’s not exactly the government, though. I’ve been helping Interpol.” He grinned, the jaunty I’m-the-smartest-guy-in-the-room expression she used to see on him every time he successfully pulled off a tricky job.

  “Excuse me,” Stoney cut in again, skepticism dripping from his deep voice, “but how does stealing from Rick Addison help Interpol?”

  “Remember the job at the Louvre last year?” Martin took a large bite of Samantha’s pepperoni pizza.

  “That wasn’t you,” she countered flatly. “The news said at least four guys were involved. They shot and killed a security guard.”

  “Right. They ticked off Interpol, and so they made me a deal. I found out who the Louvre guys were, and I’ve been working my way into the crew. I just needed to set up one last quick score worth a couple million, and ta-da, I’m part of the team.”

  “So you let me see you at the auction, waited for me to set up a meeting, and then went into my house while I was out, just so you could get in with a crew of hoods?”

  “Your house?” he repeated, his grin deepening. “And they’re hardly hoods. They’re some talented guys—that’s why Interpol needs me. N
ow that the crew trusts me, all I have to do is rat out their next job, and I get to settle into happy retirement under a new name in a warm country. I’m thinking Monaco, maybe as John Robie.”

  John Robie. Cary Grant’s character from To Catch a Thief. Martin had always imagined himself as that guy, Samantha knew, even though she considered that his reality fell far short of the fantasy.

  “I want the Hogarth back, Martin. Go make your reputation on somebody else’s hide. Not mine.”

  “Too late. I’m not the one who took it, anyway. I just set it up.”

  Samantha went cold. “You let the guys who shot a security guard break into my house with Rick there?” she snapped. It was one thing thinking Martin had gone in; despicable, but at least like her, he never carried a gun. A crew of killers, though…“Jesus Christ, Martin.”

  “Keep your voice down, Sam. And just leave this alone. After Interpol grabs the crew, you’ll probably get the art back.”

  “Like they’d hold on to it for that long,” Stoney grunted. “Nobody keeps something that hot for any longer than they have to. Trust me, it’s how I make some of my best deals.” He glanced at Samantha. “How I used to make some of my best deals,” he corrected. “I’m retired.”

  “It’s not that long. Leave it alone, and leave me alone, and maybe I’ll invite you to my retirement party. If you go after the Hogarth, they’ll know I told you about it, and you can come to my next funeral, too, Sam. For real, this time.”

  With that he stood and left the pizzeria. For a long moment Samantha and Stoney sat there looking at each other. “What the fuck am I supposed to do now?” she ground out, slamming her fist against the table. “He just shows up, and suddenly I’m twelve and he’s the grand master Jedi of cat burglars again? Has he ever done anything straight in his life?”