“I don’t see him.” I placed my drink down with a sigh. “He’s probably stuck doing paperwork for that failed library job, poor man.”
Jordan laughed and then immediately covered her mouth, as if finding my stunt funny was cause for arrest. “Aren’t you afraid he’ll be angry about that when he sees you again?”
Nope. Not even a little. He was too good an actor—too good at playing this game—to let something like anger get in the way of winning. I may not have known him long, but I knew that much for sure.
“I can handle Grant Emerson,” I said firmly.
“That’s good to hear,” Jordan said and nodded at the door. “Because I think he just arrived.”
Every nerve ending wanted me to turn around and glance in the direction she indicated, but I was determined to play it cool. “Oh yeah? What makes you think it’s him?”
She grinned. “Because he’s heading right for us.”
* * *
“Well, well, well. You do know where the Whiskey Room is.”
I could tell the exact moment when Grant reached us. Not by the sound of his voice—that low rumble of his almost-but-not-quite-Southern twang, the vibrations shaking me to my core—but because he leaned in, placed a hand on the small of my back, and dropped a kiss on my cheek.
A kiss, of all things. This man I barely knew and didn’t trust, this man I’d fled from last week as if my life depended on it, had the nerve to put his lips on my skin. Not in a creepy way, either. It was friendly, gentlemanly, one of those gestures only polite and incredibly confident men can pull off.
If that weren’t bad enough, there was also just enough stubble on his jaw to remind me that he might have been friendly and gentlemanly, but he was also very much a man. All my senses spiraled outward at once. I was still trying to find my balance when he gestured at the agent standing behind him.
“I don’t believe you’ve met my friend and partner yet,” he said with a casual air.
Well, crap. They were multiplying. “Um…no. I don’t believe I have.”
“Then let me introduce Simon Sterling. Simon, this is Penelope Blue—the woman I was telling you about.”
Oh, I bet he had. I could just picture the two of them standing by one of those boards where they try to figure out crimes, my face and my father’s face connected by a red string. That’s how official the two of them looked side by side. Simon had the wide shoulders and cocky stance I’d come to expect from this particular breed of man, but he was more urbane than Grant—and that wasn’t a compliment. I couldn’t say if it was the severity of his necktie, pulled tight like a noose, or the way his cold, blue eyes glittered like ice as they took me in, but this was clearly a man who considered himself above his company and had no intention of being charmed by my quirky criminal ways.
Good. I had no intention of being charmed by him, either. One FBI agent whose smile stopped my heart was enough.
“I’m sure it was all wonderful things,” I said and extended a calm hand. I also congratulated myself on my foresight in bringing Jordan along. It hadn’t been my intention to make her play wingman, but if anyone could get somewhere with this uptight man of the law, it was her. Unpleasant, fastidious men like him loved her tender ways. “This is my friend, Jordan.”
Based on the twinkle in Grant’s eye as he politely expressed a greeting, I could tell he knew her name already. “Wonderful,” he said and meant it.
Simon wasn’t quite as excited at the prospect, but some kind of secret message passed between the men, and they arranged themselves in a divide-and-conquer stance. Obviously, Simon was to take Jordan aside and pump her for details, while I was to be assigned Grant’s undivided attention.
I was more concerned for myself than for her. Jordan was like a vault—she’d learned a long time ago to hide her true feelings from the authority figures in her life, foster parents and FBI agents alike—and she could handle herself. Me, on the other hand, I wasn’t so sure about. Already I could feel myself basking in the warm, soft glow of Grant’s gaze, leaning into his strength as if it could carry me across mountains.
“I thought for sure I scared you away last week,” Grant said, his expression neutral. “I can’t tell you how happy I am to discover I was wrong.”
With that, the game was back on. I wasn’t scared—and he’d soon come to learn that he was wrong about a heck of a lot of things.
Jordan picked up her cue in an instant, putting a hand on Simon’s arm. “And I can’t tell you how happy I am to meet someone of your expertise. I have so many questions I want to ask.”
Simon looked down at her hand as though it might burn him. “About crime?”
“Oh, no. I know enough about that already.” I thought I heard Grant choke a little at Jordan’s honesty, but it might have been my imagination. “What I’m really curious about is a movie I was watching on TV the other night. There was this FBI agent scaling the side of the Empire State Building using nothing but suction cups, but based on my understanding of air pressure and surface tension…”
Her voice trailed off as she directed him toward the booth we’d been sitting in earlier. I had to bite on my lip to keep from laughing out loud. I was wrong about the tenderness in Jordan keeping Simon busy. Her inquisitive mind would more than take care of that. I doubt Simon could teach her anything she didn’t already know, but she’d at least make sure he tried.
“You have good taste in friends, I’ll give you that,” Grant said as soon as they moved out of earshot. “I like her.”
So did I. “I hope your partner can be trusted with her. He seems…” By the book? Straitlaced? Unpleasant? “Serious.”
Grant twisted his head to look at me. “He is serious. But he’s also been my partner for a long time. I can safely promise you that no harm will come to her through his hands.”
Much as I hated to admit it, I would have to trust this man enough to take him at his word. Of course, that didn’t mean I failed to notice that he fully reserved the right to cause harm through his own hands. I wasn’t stupid.
I smiled to show my blessing. Grant smiled back to accept my blessing. And that was that.
“Excellent,” he said and turned his attention to the bar. “I’ll have what the lady’s having. And get her another.”
“Make mine a double this time, bartender.”
The bartender winked at me and carefully poured out two glasses of tonic water. Grant took his in hand with an almost perplexed look on his face.
“Sorry to ruin your big moment,” I said. “But I don’t drink.”
“Ever?”
“Not since I was about eighteen years old.” I shrugged an apology and set to work squeezing my lemon. It behooved me to tread lightly moving forward—especially regarding my tales of the past—but if I wanted to get answers out of this man, I would have to open up enough to keep him interested. Give and take, push and pull. Nothing in this world was free. “I drank a lot of malt liquor and bottom-shelf vodka when I was young—and I mean a lot.”
“Fake ID?”
“Five-fingered discount.”
Grant’s eyes flashed in an expression of interest, the same way they always did when I surprised him with the truth. “Ah, youthful dissipation. I know it well.”
Somehow, I doubted that. “Oh yeah? You hit up a lot of liquor stores when you were a kid, Agent Emerson?”
He laughed and loosened the knot of his tie, just like every other lackey in the place. Unlike everyone else, however, there was a sensuality about the action, a man allowing himself to come undone at just the throat. A flash of that vulnerable spot, taut with muscles and sprinkled with hair, was all that he released to me.
Oh, dear God. It was enough.
“I wasn’t always an officer and a gentleman. I had my fair share of youthful shenanigans.”
“If you called them shenanigans, I prom
ise you had no such thing.”
This time, his laugh was a rumble, that force of nature not even his massive strength could hold back. “You’re a fascinating woman, you know that? The stories I bet you could tell…”
He had no freaking idea.
Or maybe he did.
“You’re probably wondering what I’m doing here.” I changed the subject with a smile, fishing around in my bag. My fingers sought the peace offering I’d brought with me. “I came to apologize for storming out on you the other day, and to give you this.”
“This?”
I handed over a carefully wrapped box the size of his palm. “I’ve got a few connections. It’s probably better if you don’t ask.”
His face revealed absolutely nothing as he took the gift in hand, but I could tell he was surprised. Three times I’d encountered this man, and I was already beginning to figure him out. His laughter was genuine, his smile devastating, his sense of humor perfectly intact. He was also phenomenally good at hiding any emotion other than that. Amusement and interest were allowed to run free, but the rest of it—the suspicion and the alarm, the fact that he genuinely thought I just handed him a stolen piece of jewelry or drugs in the middle of a federal agent’s bar—was quashed before it had a chance to surface.
He was good. He was very, very good.
But I was better.
“It’s a bit early in our relationship for presents, don’t you think?” he asked, but he tugged at the ribbon, his movements as methodical as if he were unwrapping a bomb. “I’d have gotten one for you, but I don’t know anything about you.”
“You know my name, what I do for work, and that I have deep-seated daddy issues. What more is there?”
He paused in the middle of sliding open one end of the paper. “Why did you bring your friend Jordan with you today?”
Well, well. He wasn’t wasting any time, was he? Fine, then. Neither would I.
“She insisted. My friends are very protective, especially when it comes to things like this.” I shrugged to show I wasn’t intimidated by him. “Besides, I didn’t want to come in alone only to be bombarded by federal agents trying to pick me up. They have this strange thing for me.”
“They do, huh?”
“Can’t seem to get enough. Sometimes, it feels like there’s one waiting for me every time I turn around.”
His grin deepened so much, there was actually a hint of a dimple. “I wonder why that is?”
“I suspect it’s my weirdly skinny fingers.” I nodded at the present. “It takes you a really long time to open things.”
“Sorry. It’s my grandma’s fault. She always liked to save the wrapping paper so she could reuse it. That woman never threw anything away.”
I could tell by the way he paused that he wanted me to offer a tidbit of my own in exchange, but I couldn’t have told him anything about my grandparents if I wanted to. My dad’s parents died when he was young—hence the life of crime—and we never talked about my mom at all. I could count the things I knew about her on two hands.
She’d been beautiful and funny and good. Her family disowned her when she married my dad. She died giving birth to me less than a year later. And the one time I asked about any aunts or uncles or cousins I might have floating around out there, my dad shut down so quickly that I’d never had the courage to bring it up again.
I’d had to be content with the two of us. Until, of course, he’d remarried and changed everything.
“Um…my stepmom was the opposite?” There. That would have to be enough to satiate the beast. “Unless it had substantial resale value, she threw everything away.”
He paused long enough for me to realize I’d made a huge error. “You have a stepmom?”
Shit. Crap. Damn. I’d assumed the FBI would have been diligent enough to find all the records of my father’s past—including the courthouse wedding that tied him to a woman young enough to be his daughter. But if they’d somehow missed that one, I’d just handed them a whole new lead on a silver platter.
“Well, mom is pushing it,” I said quickly, hoping to make light of my mistake. Maybe if I didn’t draw attention to it, he wouldn’t realize I’d spoken without thinking. Maybe he’d believe it to be another plant. “She wasn’t really the maternal type. Her idea of bonding time was to take me shopping with her. I had to pretend to steal something and keep the security guards busy while she got out with ten times as many goods.”
There. Hopefully, that would keep him busy for a while. Nothing I’d just said was a secret—there were several juvenile arrests on my record to attest to it—and I was establishing a foundation of trust.
“More shenanigans?” Grant asked, but he didn’t comment further. He might have, but he finally opened the package to reveal a box of extra-extra-large condoms. His laugh was all I needed to assure me I’d made the right choice.
I pointed at the slogan on the front of the box. “Guaranteed not to inhibit blood flow.”
When he looked up, his eyes were fully crinkled. “You have connections, huh?”
“I told you not to ask.”
“Oh, I won’t.” He held up three fingers in a Boy Scout salute. “I also won’t push my luck by asking if you’d like to take these out for a test drive.”
A twinge of regret took up residence alongside the desire in my gut. I mean, it wasn’t like I was actually going to sleep with the guy, but he could have at least made a push for it. It would have been fun to turn him down.
“So, what now?” I asked. “I tracked you down. I apologized. I introduced sexual tension into our relationship. What comes next?”
He dropped a few bills on the bar to cover our drinks and rose. His movements were silent but assured, and when he extended a hand to help me to my feet, I took it.
“You didn’t introduce the sexual tension.” He didn’t relinquish his hold on my hand. If anything, his grip grew tighter, determined to shackle me to his side. “That’s been there a lot longer than you realize.”
Not true. I knew this man was going to be a problem the first time I laid eyes on him, standing on the other side of those docks as I hyperventilated inside a cargo box. Now, as then, I couldn’t seem to ignore the thrill of being near him. The hard, heated wall of his body pressing against mine was doing dangerous things to my self-control.
“As to what we do next, I was thinking we should abandon Simon and Jordan and head out to dinner,” he said.
“Dinner?”
“Absolutely. Dinner, dessert, and one of those heartfelt conversations that goes long into the night.” He lifted a hand to my cheek, brushing my skin so gently, it almost didn’t count as a touch.
But it did. It counted big time.
“I can’t wait to learn everything there is to know about you, Penelope Blue. Shenanigans, evil stepmother, and all.”
Of course he couldn’t, the sneak.
“Will you come?” he asked. Anxiously, I thought.
I cast a look over at Jordan and Simon, the former chatting animatedly away as she scribbled what I could only assume were complex chemical equations on a cocktail napkin, the latter with that look of overwhelmed incomprehension men always got when Jordan talked shop. Oz was the only man I’d seen who accepted that side of her without so much as a blink.
“I meant what I said before.” Grant’s voice was earnest. “Simon won’t hurt her. You have my word on that.”
“Oh, it’s not her I’m worried about,” I said. And I wasn’t. As I accepted Grant’s hand and invitation, I knew damn well that I was the one who was going to need all the help I could get.
12
THE OTHER WOMAN
(Present Day)
It’s the height of irony that I end up hiding in a linen closet to find my cheating husband out.
It’s not my most elegant moment, crouched as I am underneath the b
ottom shelf, the scent of neatly folded sheets and towels rendering the air thick with domesticity. There are at least a dozen better hiding places in our house, but I panicked.
For the past twenty-four hours, I’ve been scouring the house while Grant’s away at work, searching for some sign of infidelity. What that sign might be, I’m not quite sure. I hardly expect to find used condom wrappers or receipts for shady hotels lying around the house—especially when we’re talking about a highly trained liar—but I don’t know what else to do. I’m not used to this kind of deception.
Yes, my friends and I steal things for a living. And yes, I’ve spent the better part of my life breaking laws and lying to get my way. But I’ve never set out to purposefully hurt another human being—at least, not without them knowing about it ahead of time. Grant and I have always operated under a set of unspoken rules that bind us: we don’t talk about work, we don’t talk about my father, and we definitely don’t talk about what the future holds for us.
The idea that Grant could hold me in his arms, kiss nonsense words into my neck and hair, claim my body with his over and over again…only to do the same with another woman?
No. A cold chill works through my body, a slice of icy fear that has nothing to do with my cramped conditions. That part was real. That part was safe. That part was ours.
The front door opens and closes again, signaling Grant’s return home in the middle of a workday. That’s the reason for my mad dash into the linen closet in the first place. I only noticed his sleek FBI-issued car pulling into the driveway with enough warning to dive into the first hiding place I could find.
Grant doesn’t come home early from work if he can possibly help it. That man lives and breathes for the FBI, spends more time with Simon than he’s ever lavished on me. In fact, I bought them a pair of His and His coffee mugs last Christmas. Grant thought it was hilarious. I’m pretty sure Simon smashed his with a hammer.
“My wife shouldn’t get back for a few more hours,” Grant says, his voice distant in a muffled sort of way. “She’s at the rec center today, and she almost always stays late afterward to make sure all the kids get picked up.”
Stealing Mr. Right Page 11
