by Lori Wilde
“I see your point,” she said.
The trip upstairs was a blur. They reached his room and David set her bag down in the corridor and weaved as he tried to insert the card key.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“Trying to get into my damned room.”
“Aren’t you going to uncuff me so I can go to my own room?”
“Hell no.” His knees buckled and he fell against the door. He was sinking fast. Only sheer effort of will had carried him this far from the floor of the pub. “You’re spending the night with me.”
“Alone? In your bed?”
“Don’t sound so panicky. Even if I was inclined to molest you, which I’m not, Herman is in a whisky induced coma.”
“Herman?”
He glanced at his crotch, then looked at her and arched an eyebrow. Or at least he thought he arched an eyebrow. He really didn’t know for sure. He couldn’t feel his facial muscles.
“Oh. You named your penis Herman? Wait, don’t confirm that, I really don’t want to know.”
He grinned. “Are you charmed?”
“Hardly.”
Again, he reached out to swipe it through the sensor pad but damned if there weren’t two of them blending and blurring together. He closed one eye.
Ah, that was better. He leaned forward and almost toppled over again.
“Jeez, you’re a menace to society, Marshall. Give me that.” Maddie snatched the key card from him and easily opened the door.
He still couldn’t believe she was unaffected by the alcohol she’d consumed. The woman was amazing.
Charging over the threshold with Maddie in tow, he made a beeline for the bed and collapsed face down. He was asleep before his head hit the pillow.
Maddie stood at the side of the bed staring down at her heavy tether. David was snoring softly, his face plowed into the bedspread, his left arm raised in the air. His raincoat stretched across the handcuffs linking them.
Great. She was chained to the sexiest man to ever irritate the bejeezus out of her.
She supposed she deserved this. Her plan had backfired. Thanks to that stupid mime.
But at least she had the necklace back. Maddie stuck her free hand into her pocket and fisted her fingers around the gold half-heart. The cool feel of it reassured her.
Cassie was okay. At least that’s what she kept telling herself.
In the meantime what was she going to do about David?
She couldn’t stand here all night, and from the amount of whisky singing through his system, he wasn’t likely to move for hours. Then again, he had managed to rouse himself off the floor of the bar and show up just in the nick of time to prevent her from committing first-degree mime-a-cide.
The man had an indomitable will. She’d grant him that.
And he was very cute in a brute force sort of way.
Cocking her head, Maddie studied the logistics of positioning herself on the bed beside him. Why couldn’t he have passed out on his back instead of his stomach?
Gingerly, she crawled onto the bed and stretched out on her belly. Cheek pressed into the bedspread, she forced herself to forget those unsavory stories she’d read about hotel bedspreads.
Don’t be so persnickety for once, Maddie. Just go with the flow. Cassie’s voice popped into her head. You can’t regulate everything in life.
Ah, but going with the flow was Cassie’s forte, not hers. To distract herself, she studied the back of David’s head.
He had a nice hairline and she loved the spiky cut. His neck was strong, but not too thick. And he had free-hanging earlobes. She preferred unattached earlobes. They were much nicer for nibbling on than the attached kind.
In that moment, it was all she could do not to prop herself up on her elbow, lean over and take that delectable lobe between her teeth and lightly bite him.
A treacherous heat started in the pit of her stomach and spread outward.
Good grief!
What was the matter with her? She was better off thinking about bedspread stains instead of this push-pull of attraction that made her want to kick him off the bed at the same time she yearned to cuddle him.
This was whacky. She was going to stop thinking all together. She was just going to close her eyes and go to sleep.
Yeah. Right.
How come her eyes were still open?
She toed off her Nikes and they fell, plop, plop, to the floor, all the while her gaze tracked from David’s neck to his broad shoulders to the slope of his ribcage.
Even through the material of his shirt, she could detect the honed ridges of his muscles.
Ach! Go to sleep.
She eased his coat up the handcuff and used it to drape her shoulder, as much to put a barrier between them as to keep warm. She wasn’t afraid he was going to try and jump her bones in the night. He was out. No, what she really feared was that her own fingers would betray her and go exploring in places they had no business exploring.
The scent of him teased her nostrils and stormed her imagination. His smell resurrected the memory of last night on the plane and the unexpected kisses they’d shared. No kisses had ever moved her the way his did.
Or left her wanting so much more.
Why was she so turned on by him? Why now? This was the totally wrong time in her life. Plus, he was arrogant and high-handed and overly competitive.
And brave and protective and generous.
Face it. You’re enjoying this.
Damn her hide, she was. But David must never know.
It had been a very long time since she’d shared a bed with a man and she had forgotten how nice it felt. That’s all this sensation was about. David wasn’t any more special than any other guy.
Ummm-huh. Sure. Go ahead. Lie to yourself.
Suddenly, the cell phone in David’s jacket pocket played the Dragnet tune.
“Pssttt, David,” she said.
He didn’t move.
“Joe Friday’s callin’.” She raked her fingers lightly over his ribs. “Wake up. It might be Henri with news about Shriver.”
He didn’t so much as groan.
She bumped his butt with her knees. “Hey, wake up.”
What if the phone call was from Cassie?
The second the thought occurred to her, Maddie was fumbling for the phone with her free hand, desperately searching for the pocket.
Don’t hang up, don’t hang up, don’t hang up, she prayed.
At last she found the phone and managed to flip it open one-handedly. “Hello.”
“Bonsoir, Mademoiselle Cooper,” Henri’s voice greeted her and Maddie’s hopes fell.
“Hello, Henri.”
“May I speak to David, please?”
Maddie propped herself on her elbow and stared down at David. Dead to the world. “I’m afraid he’s . . . um . . .” She didn’t want to rat him out and tell Henri he was drunk. “Indisposed.”
“I see.”
It sounded as if Henri was struggling not to laugh. What was so funny?
“May I take a message?”
“I just wanted to see if David had convinced you to go along with his plan to entrap Monsieurs Shriver and Levy. Since you’re answering his phone, I assume you have agreed. Mais non?”
Maddie sighed. It seemed she really didn’t have much of a choice. “I haven’t decided.”
“I understand. Pulling off this deception would take a great deal of courage. Even if David is too stubborn to tell you so himself, I know he would appreciate your assistance. He’s been chasing Shriver a very long time but David never gives up. He refuses to accept defeat.”
“He’s got a lot invested in the outcome of this case, doesn’t he?”
“He didn’t tell you about his Aunt Caroline?” Henri asked and Maddie realized he was trying to determine the exact nature of her relationship with David.
“No,” she admitted.
Henri hesitated. “I’m not sure I should tell you. Most of it I know only throug
h office gossip. David doesn’t talk about himself much.”
“If I’m going to do this thing, then I need to know why.”
“Good enough,” Henri said after a long moment. “Just don’t tell David I told you.”
“Done.”
“David was in college when it happened. He was about to start his junior year as an art history major.”
“David majored in art history?”
“Initially, oui. But what happened with his Aunt Caroline caused him to go into law enforcement instead.”
Maddie had to strain to hear what he was saying. Between Henri’s soft French accent and the crackly cell phone static, she didn’t want to miss any of the conversation. It sounded as if Henri was about to give her the key to David’s vulnerability. And when it came to dealing with the uncompromising David Marshall, the more she understood him, the better.
“That was a big leap,” she said, ears pricked, body tensed. “From art history to police work.”
“Not really. David was always pulled in two directions. His mother and his aunt came from high society, but over the years the family fortune dwindled to the value of one Rembrandt. David’s father was an army intelligence officer. He wanted David to become a soldier, but his mother was dead set against it. His parents were killed when he was twelve or thirteen and he went to live with his Aunt Caroline. She urged him to follow his mother’s wishes and become an art dealer.”
“I don’t see that refined side of him at all,” Maddie murmured, her gaze roving over David’s sleeping form. “He looks like a bloodthirsty soldier through and through.”
“Ah, don’t let his toughness fool you. It takes a long time for him to let down his guard, but he’s got a very soft heart.”
Henri’s words caused Maddie’s own heart to go all mushy. The idea that David wasn’t all brute strength and arrogant bluster stirred her in a weird way.
“While David was away at college, his aunt met a much younger man through her volunteer association with the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The man romanced her and then stole the Rembrandt right out from under her nose. The painting was meant to fund her retirement and David’s inheritance.”
“I think I understand. The much younger man was Peyton Shriver.”
“Oui. Jerome Levy was the broker who commissioned the theft and we’re convinced Levy still has the Rembrandt in his vaulted collection.”
“All this time David’s been trying to catch those two.”
No wonder he’d been desperate enough to recruit Cassie as an informant. Maddie already knew David hated to lose and Shriver had given him the slip for almost a decade. That had to burn.
“While Shriver went underground for several years, living off the spoils of the Rembrandt, David became an FBI agent and specialized in art theft detection.”
“He wants revenge,” Maddie said.
“Justice would be a fairer word. His loyalty to his aunt runs deep. She took him in when he had no one. The poor woman would be penniless if it weren’t for the money David sends her every month.”
Maddie’s heart did another smooshy, whooshy dive. She wondered how David would react if he knew Henri had spilled his most tender secret.
“Thank you for telling me all this,” she said. “It makes a difference.”
“No matter how gruff he might seem at times, he is a good man,” Henri said.
“I’m beginning to see that.”
“So tomorrow you will help us trap Shriver?”
Maddie swallowed hard and moistened her lips. She felt a jolt of adrenaline—part fear and part excitement—surge through her. Could she do it? Could she convince Shriver that she was Cassie and then rob the Louvre with him?
The thought grated against every cautious bone in her body, and yet, she wanted to do this. For her twin sister.
And for David?
“Yes,” she told Henri, committing herself to something that scared the wits out of her. “I’ll do it.”
In the middle of the night, David’s brain flung off the Crown Royal-induced fog and started poking at him with a vengeance.
Wake up, screamed his conscience. You’ve missed something important.
Haltingly, his synapses backfired as he tried to recollect what he couldn’t quite recall.
He remembered the third double whisky he’d downed at the pub—but just barely. He remembered Maddie stepping over his prostrate body and waltzing out of the pub. He vaguely remembered staggering through the streets of Paris looking for her and finding her attacking a mime.
The mime.
His brain niggled and his gut clenched. Yes. There was something about the mime.
Wake up. Sit up. Get up. This is urgent.
What was it about the damned mime?
The mime had tried to steal Maddie’s necklace. The necklace that was the mate to the one Cassie always wore.
No, no, that wasn’t it. David struggled to force his eyelids open.
Something about the mime had seemed very familiar but he’d been too busy with Maddie and too drunk to notice it at the time.
David tried to turn over in bed. Maddie groaned beside him.
He froze. What was she doing in his bed?
Had he . . . had they . . . um, done it? He had wanted to make love to Maddie, that was for sure. But he didn’t remember doing the deed. If he’d made love to the woman of his dreams, surely he would have remembered that, no matter how much whisky he’d consumed.
He raised his left hand and discovered Maddie’s slender wrist was handcuffed to his thick one.
Holy shit, what had happened?
Oh yeah.
He’d forgotten he’d handcuffed himself to her to keep her from running off to Madrid without him while he slept off his accidental bender.
They hadn’t had wild, kinky, handcuff sex after all. Bummer.
But that was a good thing.
Right?
Forget about sex. Get your mind back on the mime.
Yeah, yeah. What was it about the mime that had dragged him out of his slumber with a bastard of a headache and a mouth so dry he feared two gallons of water wouldn’t quench his thirst?
Think. Think.
He blinked.
Maddie mumbled and moved against him. The touch of her against him sent a thrust of blood to his groin.
“What is it? What’s wrong?” she asked. Her hair was tousled, making her look impossibly sexy.
“Where were you standing when you run afoul of that mime?”
“On the steps outside the Louvre. Why?”
“Sonofabitch,” he cursed as his mind exploded with the answer he’d been scrambling for. “I had it all wrong.”
“Had what all wrong?”
“He didn’t come here to rob the Louvre but to case the security system so he could rob the Prado.”
“What are you talking about?” Maddie frowned. “I’m not following.”
“Don’t you see? That was no ordinary mime. That was Peyton Shriver!”
Chapter
ELEVEN
MADDIE FIDGETED IN the dining car of the high-speed train at seven A.M. on Thursday morning while the Spanish countryside zipped past the window. They’d taken the train because the airport was in chaos with delayed flights following a bomb threat. She wore a practical traveling ensemble of loose fitting blue jeans, a long-sleeved red V-neck pullover sweater, her denim jacket and her favorite sneakers. She always felt more in control when she had her Nikes on.
David sat across from her, glowering intently. Between massaging his temple repeatedly and snarling at her over his coffee, she’d figured out his hangover must be pretty damned intense.
Following his three A.M. revelation that had whipped Maddie from a dead sleep, he had called Henri and the three of them had rushed to Shriver’s hotel.
Henri’s surveillance team had sworn it was impossible for Shriver to have left his hotel room, but when the manager opened the door, they had found a forlorn room service waiter trussed
up on the floor in his underwear. Shriver had ordered a Monte Cristo and tea around five o’clock the previous afternoon. When the waiter had arrived with his order, Shriver had bonked the guy on the head with a lamp, stolen his clothes and taken off.
Henri’s men checked all out-of-town transportation and discovered Shriver had bought a ticket for the ten P.M. superspeed train to Madrid the night before. David immediately booked seats for himself and Maddie on the next train out.
And now here they were, barreling toward their destiny.
Maddie crossed her legs and then uncrossed them again. She rolled her linen napkin up and then unrolled it. She tapped her foot and drummed her fingers and cleared her throat several times but never said anything. She squeezed and released her abdominal muscles in a series of isometric exercises. She fingered the necklace she’d repaired just before the trip, checking to make sure the clasp Shriver had broken would hold. She mentally prepared herself for any eventuality, but nothing alleviated her escalating trepidation.
A cheese omelet and buttered toast sat in front of her but she was so wound up she couldn’t force food into her mouth.
“Eat,” David growled and pointed at her plate with his fork. The expression in his eyes was dangerous, edgy, as if he knew what she looked like without her clothes on.
Heat rose to her cheeks and she hopped up from the table, her legs restless to pace the miles ticking down the track and release the nervous sexual energy clogging her brain. “I’ve got to walk. Clear my head.”
“I’ll come with you.”
“I’ll be all right on my own,” she said firmly.
“My legs need stretching too.”
She wished he would leave her alone. She felt irritable, out of sorts, short-tempered.
Maddie was accustomed to being in control but whenever she got around David, he tried to take the reins. She didn’t like his high-handedness. Nor did she care for her occasional odd longing to simply allow him to take over so she didn’t have to worry anymore.
“So,” David said after they’d traversed the train twice, weaving in and out of the cars packed with people speaking French and Spanish, Portuguese and Italian. “What was your event in the Olympics?”
“You knew I was an Olympian?”
“I ran a background check on you before we left the States,” he said.
