“That’s nice. She has good maternal instincts.” A throaty female response does little to improve the current state of affairs—pun intended. “Do you have any?”
“Maternal instincts? Can’t say that I do.”
She laughs. Predictably, it’s one of those phony, oh-you’re-so-funny-you-big-strong-man sounds I’d like to throttle at its source. “Of course not, dummy. I meant, do the two of you have any kids?”
“Not yet. But there’s plenty of time for that.”
It’s all I can do not to spring out of my hiding place right then and there. Not yet? Not yet? What the heck is that supposed to mean? Not only is it highly unusual for a man to discuss his future procreative plans with his mistress, but I can’t imagine what would possess him to introduce children into our relationship. He works eighty hours a week, and I have all the benevolence of a scorpion. Riker would make a better parent than us.
“If we’re not in a hurry, do you want to have drinks or something first?”
Grant pauses. “Nah. We should make this fast. I want a chance to get everything cleaned up before she gets back.”
“We could always do it later, if you want. I’d hate to get you in any trouble with the missus.”
“Don’t worry. I can handle her.”
I beg your pardon. I’m not a trick pony whose reins he can pick up anytime he feels like it. I’d like to see him try handling me after this.
“You’re sure she won’t mind? I don’t want to step on her turf or anything.”
“I’m sure.” His voice is grim. “If there’s one thing Penelope has made very clear to me, it’s that she doesn’t care about what I have to offer.”
My chest clenches tightly, squeezing my heart and cracking a few ribs along the way. That isn’t true. I do care. Maybe not the way other women care, and maybe not enough to overlook the fact that I’m a hardened criminal, but I’ve done the best I can.
“Now turn around,” Grant says. “I’m going in.”
The firm way he commands her is familiar, almost primitive, and I’m hit with an overpowering urge to well up in tears at the sound of it. Which is bad, because as soon as my tear ducts start working, I feel a tickle building up in my nose. It’s the combination of emotion and all the fabric softener in the close air of the closet.
“You mean I can’t watch? You’re a bit of a tease.”
“We do this my way, or we don’t do it at all.”
“A man of decision. I like it.”
The pressure behind my eyes is so strong now that I have to crinkle my nose and bite my fist to keep from giving away my position. If I’d known he planned on bringing her here, to our home, testing the springs on the antique couch we bought together before we were married, I never would’ve put myself in such a prime eavesdropping position. The last thing I want to do is sit here listening to the muffled sounds of my marriage ending. In fact, I don’t think I can do it without making myself sick.
I risk peeking under the crack in the door to evaluate the topography of retreat. The hallway is set back enough from the living room that there isn’t a clear line of sight to my hiding place. I might be able to sneak across the hall to our bedroom and escape out the window. It’s not a great plan, but it’s all I have. I shift on my haunches.
I’m about to edge the door open when Grant speaks again. “I should probably warn you—it’s a lot bigger than you think. Penelope had a hard time believing it was real at first.”
My skull cracks the shelf with a start. There’s no way to hide the sound, but I can’t move right away. I’m too rattled, too confused. Grant wouldn’t talk about the details of our sex life with another woman—with another lover—like that.
Would he?
“Do you have a dog?” the woman asks. She sounds less throaty this time, as if she’s alarmed instead of trying too hard to be seductive, and something about it registers with me.
I’ve heard that voice before. I know that voice.
“We don’t have any pets. Penelope doesn’t like animals.”
That’s not true. I like animals just fine, but mine wasn’t a childhood of chocolate chip cookies and camping trips with the family golden retriever. I don’t exactly have a framework for that sort of thing. Unfortunately, I don’t have time to quibble over the details. This is clearly another abort, abort now moment, only I don’t have the promise of Riker’s plunge into darkness to count on.
Without wasting another second, I slip the door the rest of the way open and roll neatly to the master bedroom across the hall. Equal parts ballet, gymnastics, and desperation, it’s an impressive feat. I wish there was enough time to scramble out the huge window overlooking the back porch, but the sound of footsteps makes me reevaluate my plans.
They’re her footsteps, in case you were wondering. The clack of high heels on our newly varnished wood floors is a foreign sound, since the tallest shoes I own are my thick-soled winter boots, but at least it’s more of a warning than I get from Grant. As always, it’s impossible to hear him coming.
I flip my head down to infuse a sleepy red color to my face and pull my loose T-shirt from one shoulder. As a last-second gesture, I also tug the blankets from the bed to make them look as if I was in there. I’ve always been a light, restless sleeper—something Grant knows all too well. I warned him early on in our marriage that the only way he’d get any rest at night was if we kicked it old school and got separate twin beds, but he just grunted at me and threw his massive arms and legs over my side. It turns out a girl literally can’t be restless with almost two hundred pounds of man-muscle pinning her to the bed.
I always sleep best when he’s with me, anchoring me in place.
Faking a bleary-eyed look isn’t necessary after that. As Grant rounds the corner and looks into the room, I dash a hand against my eyes. To anyone seeing me for the first time, it probably seems like nothing more than a gesture of wakefulness.
“Penelope!” Grant doesn’t have time to hide his surprise or come up with a clever excuse. His mouth opens and closes again as he takes in the room at a glance. “What are you doing home?”
“I’ve had a massive headache all day.” It’s only a partial lie. Something certainly feels like it’s about to rip me in two. “I was taking a nap.”
“But you never sleep during the day.”
I’m saved from having to respond as his bit of arm candy totters up behind him. Her shiny silver heels distract me enough that I start at the bottom and work my way up, my heart sinking with every inch of finely crafted female skin. I’m a dancer—ostensibly—and Riker makes me jog three miles every day to stay in shape, so I have fairly decent legs, but this woman could crush me with one flex of her calves. There’s nothing but miles of taut, creamy skin, all of it leading up to a tight red dress that might have functioned as a Band-Aid in a past life.
Its primary function now is to lift. Ass, waist, boobs—there isn’t a part of that woman that sags the way God and nature intended.
I know, in that moment, that what I need more than a diamond necklace, more than a better hideout than the linen closet—more, even, than a husband who doesn’t love me—is a red dress like that one.
Then I see her face.
Maybe it’s the fact that I just tipped my head upside down, so there’s an abnormal amount of blood trapped there, or maybe it’s the overwhelming sensation of too many surprises, but the second I notice the wide-set eyes and perfectly sloping nose, the platinum hair flowing like the mane of a lioness, I lose all sense of my surroundings.
I’m no longer standing in the bedroom of a house I share with my enemy. My husband isn’t cheating on me with a gorgeous blond wearing a Band-Aid. I’m rushing blood and a sensation of hot-cold-hot-cold on rotation. I’m weak in the knees and about to slump to the floor.
I’m out like a—
* * *
“I
think she’s coming to. Do you want me to grab her a glass of wine or something?”
“She doesn’t drink. Water will be fine.”
“Doesn’t drink? That’s odd. I remember—”
Even though I’m comfortably ensconced in Grant’s lap and still feeling light-headed, I snap my eyes open before Tara has a chance to say what she remembers. The summation of her worldly knowledge is something I have a profound interest in, but I’m not about to ask her to spill it while my husband sits here, running his palm in a soothing pattern over my forehead.
In fact…
I struggle to sit up, scooting a few inches away from Grant as I go. I don’t want his gentle caresses and warm lap right now. I don’t know where that lap has been…or rather, I do, and that’s the problem.
He can tell in an instant what I’m thinking, because he wraps his arms around me and holds me tight, refusing me the benefit of space. It’s not a hug—it’s more of a choke hold—but I can already feel my body betraying me.
He’s so warm, so solid, so comfortable. And strong. I’m pretty sure he’s not straining so much as a fiber of muscle to keep me pressed against him.
“Let me go, you bastard.” I struggle against that strength, feeling better when the swell of his muscles tenses and he’s forced to exert a little effort to hold me in place.
“Not until you calm down.”
Oh, he does not get to tell me to calm down right now. “I’ll scream. I’ll scream so loud, they’ll hear me in Queens.”
“This isn’t what you think, Penelope.”
How does he know? I glare. “You have no idea what’s going through my head right now.”
“If the look on your face before you passed out was anything to go by, I have a pretty good idea.” He drops his mouth so close to my ear that I can feel the vibrations of his breath. Like a tuning fork, my entire spine tingles its response. “Stop fighting, my love. I’m not going to release you until you let me explain.”
Despite those tingles—or perhaps because of them—I glare harder. He doesn’t even have the decency to look ashamed of himself.
“You can’t force me to listen to you,” I say. “Is this why you left our anniversary dinner early? Is she the reason you went out of town?”
I try a quick bending twist, hoping I can outmaneuver him by being slippery, but he anticipates the action and pins me with some kind of wrestling move. Now it’s not just his arms or his lap trying to lull me into a state of complicity—it’s his whole body, all those pounds of him pressing down on my softest parts. Breasts and thighs, the thrust of pelvises fitting neatly together. He uses that pressure, the laws of gravity and human nature, to try and subdue me even more.
He’s not being very gentle with a woman who just passed out—a fact that’s finally borne on him when he manages to stop my wriggling, his leg pinned between mine and his forearm across my throat. “I’ve never seen you pass out like that before. Are you okay?”
It’s almost impossible to speak while he crushes my windpipe and slowly presses the oxygen out of my lungs, but I manage to croak out a credible, “I just found out you bring women to the house when I’m not here, and now you’re trying to murder me to hide the evidence. Do you think I’m okay?”
His expression goes from concerned to pleased, which, I can promise you, doesn’t push me toward forgiveness. “Are you jealous?”
Jealous is not the right word for what I’m feeling. Angry, maybe. Livid, probably. Hurt, for sure. It’s one thing to step out on me with a hot woman in a flashy red dress. It’s another to step out on me with that particular woman. Even though she’s aged a good ten years, I remember all too well the last time we shared breathing space.
She’d stolen the man in my life that time, too.
“Of course I’m not jealous. I’m suffocating.”
He releases me from his death grip and rocks back on his heels, his lips still turned up in a smile. “You’re not suffocating.”
“I’m not now.” I rub the front of my neck—an action that was supposed to highlight my near-death injury—but my fingers brush against the infinity knot of my necklace instead, and I drop my hand like it’s on fire. “Stop smiling at me. You’re a cheating bastard, and you can’t charm your way out of this one.”
He obeys my command—for what has to be the first time in his life—but he replaces his smile with a gentle expression that unsettles me even more. “I’m not cheating on you, Penelope Blue. I decided a long time ago that I was going to have you or no one.”
Gah. Now is not the time for singsong antics and sweetly sexy voice rumbles. Tara will be back here with a glass of water any second, and I need to figure out whether I’m supposed to recognize her.
Why, no, Grant. I’ve never seen this woman before. You might want to run a background check, though. She has the cheap look of a con artist, don’t you think?
The reason I passed out isn’t because you’re a two-timing jerk, Grant. It’s because the woman you decided to cheat on me with happens to be my stepmother. How long have you two known each other?
Neither of those options holds much appeal, but I’m a woman floundering in the deep end over here—and I don’t know how much longer I’m going to be able to keep my head up.
“She’s a business associate,” he says, his voice low enough that only the two of us can hear. Any lingering playfulness is gone. “That’s all.”
As I’m fully aware of her line of business—making men fall in love with her and ruining their lives a few short months before they disappear into thin air—that doesn’t bring me much comfort.
“She’s in the FBI?” I ask incredulously. “The physical standards must be slipping over at the Bureau.”
“She’s a contact. Contacts aren’t required to pass the physical, or we’d be in a hell of a lot of trouble. Not everyone can stay in this kind of shape, you know.”
I ignore the provocation. “What kind of contact?”
“The usual kind. Slightly shady but useful enough for the good to outweigh the bad. You of all people should know how lenient the government can be about that sort of thing.” His dark gaze doesn’t leave mine, and I swallow heavily. “I had to call her in when my other plans fell through. My first choice refused to take the bait, so I was forced to resort to extreme measures.”
That’s all I’m able to get out of him, because the woman of the hour totters back in, a glass of water extended in one hand.
“She looks like she’s feeling better,” Tara says when Grant twists to glance up at her. “Drink this, honey. It’ll help.”
“I’m not your honey,” I grumble.
I don’t want to drink her water, and I don’t want her to slip back into this ridiculous Mommie Dearest role—the same one she fooled me with all those years ago. Tara had only been nineteen years old to my fourteen when she married my dad, but those five years might as well have been fifty for all it had mattered to me. I’d wanted to like her. Love her, even. She knew things—practical things, common sense things—that had eluded me for years. Makeup, tampons, that always tricky question of how to shave your legs without ripping off all the skin. I’d thought she was some sort of goddess sent to soothe my adolescent woes.
The feelings hadn’t been reciprocated. Tara had hated me on sight—not that she would have done anything to let my dad know. To hear her tell the tale, all she’d wanted was for me to be her dear, sweet stepdaughter, but my surly attitude kept her away.
I was fourteen, motherless, and had taken up a life of crime mostly to get closer to my absent father. Of course I’d been surly.
“She’s right.” Grant holds the glass to my lips. “Drink this.”
I do, but begrudgingly, glaring at him all the while. Grant pulls me to my feet and takes a look at the two of us—his angry, disheveled wife and the siren business associate—as if deciding how best to pr
oceed in this tangled web of his making.
Tara takes the guesswork out of it. She extends her perfectly manicured hand and smiles, a familiar flash of teeth that makes what’s left of my heart turn to lead. “I’m Tara. Tara Lewis. So pleased to meet you.”
Lewis, huh? When she married my dad, she took on the Blue surname. The fact that she returned to her maiden name—or what she always told us was her maiden name—speaks volumes. Also, it seems we’re pretending not to know each other. How interesting.
“Penelope Blue,” I reply and shake.
Her brow lifts once she realizes that I, too, am using my real name at a time like this. It’s almost funny, actually. If I think it’s weird that she’s working with an FBI agent, she must be losing her shit over the fact that I married one.
Well, too bad. What did she think would happen, abandoning me to the streets without a penny to my name? If it weren’t for Riker, my life could have ended up a lot worse than this. Marrying Grant might not have been the smartest decision I’ve ever made, but at least I’m still alive.
Though probably not for much longer. The next words out of my mouth are designed to irritate everyone in my immediate proximity.
“So, Tara,” I say, “what do you do for the FBI that requires you to dress up like a hooker and go to strange men’s houses?”
“Penelope!” Grant says sharply—more sharply than I’ve heard him speak before—but I won’t be swayed. I’m suddenly very tired. All the lying and sneaking around, the double speaking and near-misses. For once in my poor, twisted life, I’d like to say what I’m thinking: I’m not so sure I want to play anymore.
“What?” I ask, the surliness of my youth rising anew.
“That was uncalled for.”
Uncalled for it might have been, but Tara just laughs, the sound deep and rich and evidence of the chain-smoking I remember from my youth. She actually used one of those cigarette holders from the forties when she indulged in the habit—all part of her man-catching charm.
“No, no. It’s a perfectly fair question.” She casts him a sly smile. “I don’t blame her for keeping a tight leash on you. If you were my husband, I wouldn’t let you out of my sight.”
Stealing Mr. Right Page 12
