Oh, I have something coming, all right, but I seriously doubt it’s that pair of earrings he’s lingering over. Not that it matters about five seconds later, when the whirring click of the air turns off behind me.
Air. One.
Music. Two.
Lights. Three.
With that, the entire jewelry store plunges into a vacuum of electricity—just like we planned. So much for aborting the mission. Riker’s sense of timing has always been worthless.
On cue, explosions sound from the street outside, spurring me to action and filling my ears with the ringing clatter of crashing metal and shouting. I don’t bother to hide my groan as I drop the night vision goggles into place. As much as I’d love to see this job through, there’s no way I can safely nab that necklace. Not now. Not if my husband is standing between me and Erica Dupont’s neck.
The vent takes on an eerie green glow through my goggles, but I don’t wait around for my eyes to adjust. Quick—so quick I almost lodge my shoulders sideways—I manage to get myself turned around. On my stomach, I wriggle as fast as I can in the opposite direction.
Even though this duct is used for cooling purposes only, I swear I can feel the metal heating underneath me as I worm my way through. In my panic, I’m also convinced Grant is right behind me—rattling the vent panel, climbing in, grabbing me by the ankle and giving a firm tug…
The duct still echoes with the sound of my escape as I make it to the exterior panel. Even though I know—I know—it’s only my imagination holding fast to my foot, a creeping numbness invades the limb. Which is why, by the time I finally push aside the metal cover and pull myself into the blinding night-vision-enhanced sunlight, I end up sprawled face-first on the rooftop tar, my foot twisted unnaturally underneath me and a sharp stab shooting through my ankle.
“Ow. Ouch. Ow.” I tuck into a neat ball and roll up on one leg, forcing myself to keep hopping, keep going, keep moving. Failed jewel thieves don’t have the luxury of wallowing in their pain.
Especially not failed jewel thieves whose husbands might come flying up the fire escape at any moment.
Even though our plans originally called for me to jump down to the back alley, where a dumpster full of padded garbage bags awaits, I decide it’s too risky to be anywhere near street level. Gauging the distance between me and the discount shoe store rooftop with a cringe, I put as much weight on my ankle as I can. It’s not much, but it’s enough to give me the running start I need.
With a quick prayer to the gods who watch over the desperate and determined, I leap.
So much for my foolproof plan.
* * *
I’m limping, exhausted, and starving by the time I arrive at Bryant Park.
“Food.” I drop to the round, café-style table with a sigh, ignoring the sounds of ping-pong taking place across the lawn. My ankle is throbbing inside the black jazz shoes I always wear when I’m working, but I don’t dare take them off. Based on the swelling currently ballooning inside my skin, I can’t risk releasing the pressure, or I’ll never get them back on again. “And water. And food.”
“Give me the necklace first,” Riker says. He’s looking rested and well-fed, two characteristics that don’t endear him to me at the moment.
“Don’t mess with me right now. I’m so hungry, I could eat this table, bird droppings and all.”
He drapes his arm more firmly over the picnic basket he brought along, tempting me with its signature red checks. Not that there’s anything delicious in there. If this were a real picnic, there’d be roast beef sandwiches, plates of cheese, and cake in a rainbow of colors. Sadly, this is no friendly meal for two. It’s a rendezvous between one tattered, exhausted jewel thief and the handsome bastard of a man who tells her what to do.
“Seriously, Riker.” My stomach growls a warning that practically echoes through the park. “I haven’t eaten in, like, ten hours. Please tell me you brought cookies.”
He slides the basket across the table and lifts the lid. “You know the deal. Drop off first.”
It’s with an unhappy sigh that I begin tossing in the paraphernalia from the running belt strapped to my waist. The night vision goggles, cracked and useless and with several clumps of my reddish-blond hair caught in the band. The cell phone, which Riker will dispose of by mysterious means. The now-empty energy gel pack that was supposed to sustain me during my long, cramped stay in air-duct-ville. And finally, the screws to the vent, which I was unfortunately unable to replace in my mad dash to get outside in one piece.
“The necklace?”
I shake my head.
“You don’t have it?”
I shake it again, more forcefully this time. This whole thing is his fault in the first place—even the twisted ankle, though making a rational argument for that one will be hard. “I take it you didn’t get my text message?”
“Which one? You spent half the day sending me terrible jokes.” He pauses, only the right side of his mouth scowling. It’s a common trick of his—he’s always had these freakishly weird lips that twist in opposite directions depending on his mood. The left side smiles. The right side scowls. You’d think such a quirk would make him appear disfigured, but it suits his dark, angular features to perfection—brings a touch of human to his otherwise flawless exterior. Seriously. I know supermodels who weep over the shape of his cheekbones.
“Pen, you’re starting to freak me out. I’m sorry it took so long for the lights to go down—I missed one of the wires—but that shouldn’t have been a deal breaker. Just a delay. What happened?”
“I didn’t get the necklace, that’s what happened,” I say. “I’d go into more detail, but my blood sugar is too low. I feel a faint coming on.”
“Please. You’ve never fainted a day in your life. You have an iron head and a titanium stomach.”
“Exactly my point.”
Finally—finally—he takes pity and hands me a banana from among the discarded tech in the picnic basket. A banana, of all things. Riker is paranoid I’m going to gain weight and ruin all his plans to squeeze me inside air ducts and garbage cans, so he polices my diet accordingly. Still, I peel it greedily, not pausing to chew before I swallow.
“There, you’re fed. If you don’t have the necklace, where is it?”
I hand him the peel. “I assume it’s back in the vault. As soon as the lights went out, I got out of there as fast as I could.”
“But everything was going according to plan!”
“Um, not everything. Did you happen to see who was helping that woman out of the car?”
“A guard. Hired help. You said he wasn’t a problem.”
“He wasn’t a problem. At least, not until I recognized him.”
Riker’s eyes flare in a moment of alarm, and that’s when I know he understands. “No.”
“Afraid so. I should have known the moment he walked in. Shoulders like that could only belong to Grant.”
As if conjured by my husband’s name, Jordan appears out of nowhere, sliding into the seat opposite me and smelling like her usual mix of sulfur and candy. She’s still wearing the jean shorts layered over ripped leggings she donned for the job—an unquestionably punk outfit to go with the juvenile antics of setting off fireworks in a garbage can. In her everyday life, Jordan is much more likely to wear sweater sets and neatly ironed linen dresses, but she’s found that an impeccably attired, twentysomething black woman setting off explosives in broad daylight draws much more attention than a slouchy, underdressed teenager doing the same. How’s that for societal expectations?
“Grant-Grant?” she asks, not missing a beat.
“Grant-Grant-Grant,” I confirm. I peek inside the picnic basket, but unless I want to start munching electronics, I’m going to have to wait until I get home. “I guess the FBI must have received a tip-off the necklace was being moved and decided to get there first.�
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“What do you mean, you guess the FBI must have received a tip-off?” Riker asks.
“I mean, based on the day’s events, which conspired to place my very own husband at the scene of our crime, I can only assume he was on the job. We always said it seemed too good to be true, the way the necklace was being transported with almost no security. Now we know it was. He’s probably been in on it from the start.”
“But how could you not have seen this coming?” Riker demands. “He never mentioned stopping by a jewelry store this afternoon?”
I don’t like his tone. “Of course not.”
“And you didn’t accidentally indulge in a little pillow talk one night?”
Now I don’t like his words, either. “What exactly are you accusing me of here, Riker? I just spent all day trapped inside an air vent. Months planning this with you guys. Do you honestly think I’d have gone through with everything if I had any idea Grant would be there?”
“It’s one monster of a coincidence. Are you sure he isn’t having you followed?”
“Of course I’m sure!” I’m on my feet now, glaring at him across the table. “You’re the one in charge of details. If we’re going to make accusations, why don’t we point fingers at your mysterious underworld buyer and his two-million-dollar promises? I thought you said you vetted this guy before you agreed to the job.”
“His name is Blackrock, and I did vet him. The man is infallible, a god among thieves.”
One thing I know for sure: gods and thieves rarely play well together. “You must have overlooked something.”
“I didn’t overlook anything.”
“Well, you underlooked, then. Grant was there, Riker. So close I could have touched him.”
“You’re yelling, Pen.” Jordan speaks calmly, ending our argument before it has a chance to get started. For a woman who loves a good explosion, she’s always been a remarkable diplomat.
She’s also right. I am yelling, and I have to force myself to take a deep breath and relax, focusing on the careful rise and fall of my chest. It’s the technique I resort to whenever the walls start closing in on me—metaphorically speaking—and it comes in handy at times like this. Whatever else I might be able to say about him, Riker is good for my oxygen saturation levels.
“I’m sorry we didn’t get the necklace,” I say and mean it. This makes two times someone in my family has failed to get their hands on those diamonds, but at least I haven’t disappeared into thin air as a result. Yet. “And I’m sorry for yelling. I didn’t want to lash out at you, but I’m hungry and cranky, and I hurt my ankle climbing out of the vent.”
Riker’s scowl lifts. “Apology accepted.”
True to form, he doesn’t offer one in return. Before I can drop a hint that one would be welcomed—deserved, even—Jordan takes over, her natural tact smoothing over the rough spots. “There. Now that you have it out of your system, you two can be friends again.”
Friends. As if that word contains the depth needed to describe the complex, tangled, soul-deep relationship I share with this man. It would be like calling Federal Agent Grant Emerson my husband. Sometimes, mere semantics aren’t enough.
Jordan further proves the inefficacy of the human language with a quick hand gesture that neither Riker nor I can decipher. I recognize it only as a signal to Oz, which she makes using a weird sign language the two of them created when they were foster kids together. Those two are so emotionally connected, they can practically write Shakespeare in a few twitches of the wrist. It’s freaky.
It’s also a sign of how good a master of disguise Oz is, because I didn’t even see him standing over there by the entrance to the library. Medium height, medium build, average features, eyes that aren’t really any one color—when Oz isn’t in some kind of prearranged uniform, even I have a hard time spotting him in a crowd, and I’ve known the man for just about forever.
“Oz thinks we should take a few days.” Her eyes squint as she tries to read his hand movements from afar. “That way, we can decompress and cool off. It’s not a bad idea. We’ll regroup later this weekend and do the postmortem then. I think we’re all feeling disappointed, and it’s not going to do us any good to take it out on each other.”
Before I have a chance to agree—it is a good idea to take a few days away from the people I love most and least in the world—Riker shakes his head. “Nope. It won’t work. We can’t meet this weekend.”
Oh, for the love of everything. Would it kill him to be conciliatory for once? It’s not like any of us wanted things to turn out this way. Besides, he knows how much that necklace means to me. Few people get a chance to cash in on the unlucky talisman that ruined their lives. I know my cut of the money won’t make up for the loss of my dad—and it won’t even begin to cover the huge fortune that disappeared with him—but it’s a decent start.
“Come on, Riker,” I say. “Your hot dates and big plans are going to have to wait. Figuring out what went wrong is more important than your personal life.”
“Too bad it’s not my personal life that’s the issue here.” He pushes back from the table. His movements are jerky, a clear sign he’s trying—not very successfully—to hide his emotions.
That’s when it hits me.
“In case you’ve forgotten,” he says, “tomorrow is your anniversary.”
My anniversary.
Well…crap.
2
THE HUSBAND
(Later that Night)
“I know it’s a day early, but I got you something.”
I don’t make a sound as the low timbre of my husband’s voice surprises me from the bathroom doorway—that’s two decades of on-the-job training put to good use right there—but I do fumble with the razor I’d been drawing over my leg. I see the nick before I feel it.
“Jesus, Grant.” I twist my leg to keep the sudden welling of blood from dripping all over the claw-foot tub. “Give a girl a little warning, will you? I think I might need stitches.”
“No, you don’t. Stitches are only for wounds of depth—not breadth. There’s nothing there to stitch.”
It’s a fair assessment, but I’m not about to let him bury my gaping leg wound under his practical streak. Grant has the annoying habit of FBI agents everywhere in believing that an injury isn’t worth note unless it’s a gunshot wound sustained in the line of duty. He and Riker share that in common, actually. My pain is a matter of complete indifference to them. I could be hit by a car, and both of them would expect me to remember to sit up and jot down the license plate number before it got away.
“Are you going to give me a first aid lecture while I bleed all over the bathroom floor?”
“If your plan is to sit there until you pass out, then yes. It sounds like you might need one.”
“What I need is sympathy, you jerk.”
He complies in an instant. “Of course you do, poor baby. Let me see it.”
He passes silently from the doorway to my side, where I’m perched on the edge of the tub, my leg extended at an awkward angle and propped by the tiled wall. It baffles me that a six-foot-two former Virginia Tech quarterback can walk around without making a sound, but he’s always had an uncanny ability to move on a cloud of air.
I want to protest as he perches himself on the toilet seat and draws my naked leg into his lap, but, well, my naked leg is in his lap. Nudity has a way of taking over every other consideration, and I’m reminded that the rest of me is also quite bare, wrapped up in a fluffy white towel and nothing more. He’s aware of it, too, his eyes following the line of my thigh up to where it disappears into the terry cloth.
It’s all I can do not to melt into a puddle alongside the overspray from my shower. Even though tomorrow will signal an entire year of wedded bliss, I haven’t yet figured out how to be naked in a room with my husband without being all too aware of my body’s discrete p
arts. I’m all skin and nipples and legs, my nerve endings pricking to awareness thanks to his proximity alone.
His proximity is, unfortunately, impossible to ignore. Although it’s been a good eight years since he played football, he hasn’t lost a fiber of the well-formed muscle from his athletic youth. I should know. I’ve seen the pictures. I’ve studied the pictures—not to mention the school reports, his recruitment to the FBI, an obscene list of professional accolades, childhood immunization records, and even an article from when he was twelve and won the Pinewood Derby.
In short, I’ve discovered just about everything there is to know about this man, but I still couldn’t tell you how he knew I was going to be at that jewelry store today.
And he knew. There’s not a doubt in my mind that Grant planned today’s botched job down to the last frantic second.
He’s too good not to. That man sees, hears, and knows all. Let me tell you—there’s nothing worse than a husband who’s always right. Unless, of course, he also happens to be your mortal enemy.
“I think you’re going to live.” Grant’s gentle smile mocks me, but that doesn’t make it any less powerful an aphrodisiac. His movements are careful as he pulls out a box of Band-Aids from under the sink, and he even goes so far as to blow on my shin before putting the bandage in place. His breath is hot and cold at the same time, and even though admiration is the last thing I should be feeling for him right now, I can’t help but appreciate the way his generous lips form a familiar and enticing shape.
Dammit. I lied before. There is something worse than a lover-slash-enemy who knows too much. If there was any justice in this world, he’d at least refrain from being a heap of masculine perfection in shirtsleeves. I swear, someone beyond the pearly gates must be laughing it up at my expense. I hope they’re enjoying the show.
Fortunately for my sanity and self-control, his hand brushes my ankle as he tosses the wrapper in the garbage. Even that slight contact shoots fire up my leg. Since I know I’m not going to get any sympathy from Grant unless I can magically transform a twisted ankle into a bullet wound, I bite my lip to keep from crying out.
Stealing Mr. Right Page 2
