by Toni Blake
“You are?”
“I know enough to fake it. When he expressed an interest, I suggested we get together one evening. I’d been hanging out with him for a few nights by then, so it didn’t seem odd to invite him to dinner.”
“And why does he think he’s spending the night?”
“He doesn’t necessarily, yet. But according to all the victims I’ve talked with, he gets chummy fast and then finds a way to prod the invitation.”
She nodded, then realized she’d never let Max answer her original question. Her chest tightened as she brought it back up. “So, about the sleeping arrangements …”
“Carlo will take one of the guestrooms,” he said.
Okay, get to the important part already. But when he didn’t launch right into that, she heard herself talking, rushing to fill the empty space. “I’m guessing you and I will pretend to sleep here—” she pointed to the bed, “—but that one of us will really take another bedroom after lights are out.”
Yet Max gave his head a decisive shake. “No way, Brandt. Too easy to get caught and it would look suspicious as hell. Some things you can’t pretend—so you and I will definitely be sharing this bed.”
Chapter Four
She looked back and forth between him and the bed, half surprised at his answer, and half surprised that she actually thought it sounded like such an awful idea. After all, despite the front she was putting up, in her heart of hearts, she’d almost already admitted to herself that the idea of sleeping next to Max turned her insides to jelly, no matter how much he disliked her.
Now, however, faced with doing just that, her muscles tensed and her stomach churned. And if it was something she really wanted, would it make her feel sick like this? So maybe she really was capable of not thinking of Max that way.
But she could ponder that later—right now she had to deal with the matter at hand. “Do you think that’s…appropriate?”
“Not particularly,” he said. “But husbands and wives generally sleep together. Sleeping apart wouldn’t do much to uphold our cover.”
“We could make it look like we’re having a fight. That might make me seem like easier prey.”
He shook his head, appearing as decisive as ever. “That’s just it—Carlo doesn’t want easy prey. Or at least not that easy. He gets off on seducing the otherwise loving wife from her husband. He wants to be the choice, not the fallback position.”
Pulling in her breath, she tried again. “Well, what was wrong with my first idea? The one where we act like we’re turning in together and then later you sneak out and sleep somewhere else.” She still thought it was a pretty good suggestion. Of course, maybe that was because she felt desperate and didn’t have any other ones.
Yet it only brought another headshake. “He might get up in the night and realize we aren’t together, that’s what. What if he were to look into the room while we’re sleeping or something?”
She grimaced. “You think that’s possible?”
“How would I know? The guy’s a creep. Anything’s possible. Which reminds me, we need to talk about actually nailing this jerk.”
She let out a sigh she hoped Max didn’t see. It would seem the matter was settled, whether she liked it or not—so onto the next item of business. Lowering herself onto the ornate bed, she said, “I’m listening.”
“The only thing Carlo’s seductions have in common,” Max said, “is that he moves in for the kill when the husband’s not home, and he ends up getting out of the house with jewelry—usually without the woman’s knowledge. In one case, the wife went to take a shower after they’d had sex—taking off her jewelry beforehand—and when she came back, he was gone, along with the gems. And like I told you before, he actually took the jewelry off my client while she was sleeping. Another woman chose to refuse his advances—which is what will happen with you. She ran out of the room, at which point Carlo wiped her dresser clean of all the jewels other than what she was wearing, then took off.”
“So I’ll refuse his advances—but where will you be?”
“This is going to be a carefully orchestrated operation, Brandt. A while after we’ve all gone to bed, I’ll pretend I got an urgent call and need to leave for a work emergency—and I’ll wake Carlo to let him know. I’ll also mention that you have trouble sleeping when I’m away. I won’t really take off, though—I’ll actually be in the closet,” he said, motioning to it. “Then you’ll invite him into the bedroom to keep you company, or to see the view from the balcony or something—unless he just shows up on his own first, which is likely.”
At this, she rose from the bed and padded over to check out said view. The balcony overlooked an expansive pool and, beyond that, a vast tree-filled valley that stretched for miles, dotted with only other mansions and estates.
“I’ll be videotaping the theft,” Max continued, “and I’ll also be there just in case you have any trouble fending the guy off. Hopefully, he’ll back off easily but still use the opportunity to swipe the jewelry anyway.”
Kimberly nodded. Sounded pretty straightforward.
“Any questions, Brandt?”
“None.”
“All right then. I’ll give you a few minutes to unpack your stuff.” And that quickly, he was out the door and she was alone in this fabulous room where a crime would soon take place. And where she and Max would soon share a bed. Which bothered her even more as she thought about it, actually making her stomach clench. She didn’t want to sleep next to Max tonight. Or any other night.
She felt better knowing that—knowing that whatever she’d been feeling around him last night and this morning had apparently faded. But she didn’t feel better knowing that they were going to sleep in this bed together. Something about it actually made her skin crawl.
Only…now that she thought about it, maybe Max hadn’t thought through that part as clearly as he acted like. After all, it sounded like they would only pretend to go to bed for a little while—with, she presumed, the goal of placing her in the bedroom with the jewels when Max pretended to depart, making it easy for the thief. And if it all went as planned, the theft would take place, Carlo would be long gone, and then sleeping arrangements wouldn’t matter. In fact, they might end up being awake all night anyway, going to the client or the police with the tape and ultimately heading home before morning. She supposed a lot of this would be left up to happenstance and timing. But the realization made it easier to move past the issue of sharing a bed with Max onto more productive things.
Unpacking didn’t take long. She added her array of sexy dresses to the already filled closet, put her toiletries in the bathroom, and stuck her bikini and lacy undies in the drawers provided. She had no intention of letting Carlo Coletti see her in anything lacy, of course, but it had seemed like a good thing to have around just in case he did something gross like went through her drawers. Besides, the character of Mrs. Max Tate, whom she would become this evening, didn’t wear cotton panties like Kimberly mostly did. Only the most luxurious of fabrics for Kimberly Tate, stockbroker’s wife and femme fatale.
Max had explained to her already that the rest of the house was completely furnished and stocked with food, drink, and everything else people needed to live. Before the day was through, she’d have to tour it carefully and find out the little things—where they kept the bath towels, what kind of food was on hand, how the alarm system worked. She’d have to make sure it seemed like she and Max really lived there.
Of course, that was only part of it. They had to do more than live there—they had to convince Carlo Coletti that they were married. Had Max really thought about that? She wandered back to the bed and let herself plop down on it to stare up at the vaulted ceiling. Perhaps she should address the question with him, but it seemed a touchy subject. She didn’t want to imply that they should or shouldn’t do any specific married-seeming things in front of Carlo Coletti. Physical things, for instance. Still, wouldn’t they have to? The thought made her shiver, just like when she t
hought of sharing this bed with him. But she guessed she had no choice but to cross that bridge when she came to it.
And maybe Max did have a plan. Maybe he was going to portray himself as one of those unaffectionate husbands who took their wives for granted and never paid them any attention. Of course, maybe that wouldn’t work if Coletti was set on tearing apart a happy couple. But as cold as Max was acting to her, the neglectful husband would be an easy role for him to take on.
He seemed to think he was the only one of them who had suffered any losses because of the Carpenter case. He blamed her for everything, though—so of course he wouldn’t be sitting around thinking about how her life had been affected. She’d lost her job, which she’d loved, and she’d lost him, whom she’d also loved, all in one fell swoop. Not to mention that at the time she’d also been dealing with the very fresh news that her mother had cancer.
Two months of depression later, she’d pulled herself together enough to take a job with another company. The guy she’d worked for, though, wasn’t as good as Max, and business was bad. When the agency finally folded just over a year ago, she’d signed on with Frank.
She’d recovered from the blows she’d taken during that period, but she considered it the blackest spot of her entire past, for reasons both professional and personal.
Oh sure, she’d made mistakes under Max’s tutelage, but she’d never completely screwed up a case before that. And until then, she’d never been fired from a job in her life.
Worse yet, his way of handling the situation had shown her that he obviously hadn’t cared for her very much. Yes, she’d been the one to walk out of that office. But he’d been the one who didn’t stop her. And then he’d gone to Las Vegas, just like that.
Only then had she come to the conclusion that what they’d shared had been one-sided. Not sexually—she knew that. But in other ways. Emotional ways. It had made her glad she’d never said the words that had lingered on the tip of her tongue whenever they were together—I love you. And if any shred of doubt about how he felt had been left dangling in the back of her mind, seeing him—first last night and then again today—had killed it off entirely. It was clear she’d been nothing to him.
But that’s okay. She pushed down an old familiar hurt as it bolted through her That’s okay because you don’t even want to share a bed with him. You don’t want to be close to him. Last night and this morning, that was like shellshock or something. But the fact was—she was over Max. Completely. And for good. As of right now, he was nothing to her, either.
Max lay on the plush leather couch in the big family room watching TV—trying to take it easy in the last few hours before the show began, and also trying to get acclimated and feel as if this place, this life, was his. Meanwhile, his weekend wife was in the kitchen digging through drawers and cabinets, getting familiar with things. Personally, he thought she was overdoing it, but he wasn’t going to chastise her. It couldn’t hurt for her to know where they kept stuff.
He didn’t know why he’d made that crack earlier—the one about her handling the job. He’d told himself this morning that he had to quit that crap if they were going to work together with any success, but it had leaked out like air escaping a punctured balloon.
Three years hadn’t healed his mistrust of her. This was going to be hard, perhaps the hardest case of his career—and now it was being made even harder, not only by his fears of her screwing up or letting him down, but also because he had to own up to the fact that he was still attracted to her. Which he’d have to forget or ignore or something. It was like he’d told Frank last night. If he wanted sex, he could get it. He certainly wouldn’t attempt to get that or anything else from the woman who had betrayed him.
“Oh my God, we have caviar!”
Her voice sounded from somewhere in the kitchen behind him and he worked to hold in even the hint of a smile—whether she could see him or not. He couldn’t start going soft on her. But that’s what he remembered about Kimberly. How fascinated she could be by the world. How in awe.
Maybe that was why he’d given her such a hard time over her wonder regarding the house—maybe he hadn’t wanted to be reminded of her, and of him, of them together. And maybe that was why he’d thought this morning of those simple, easy times with her, those T-shirt and jeans times.
He knew they’d done other things, too—gone out to dinner, to plays, to clubs—but she could find an unmitigated joy just in eating ice cream or watching the rain fall. She wasn’t like that all the time—when she was working, she was strictly business. But when work was done, she took the playing of life pretty seriously, and he’d liked that.
She came rushing into the room in a flurry then, cutting into his thoughts and stirring up a small breeze. “Tate, I just thought of something!”
“What’s that?”
“Dinner! Am I supposed to be cooking this dinner? Because if I am, what am I making? And how am I making it? I mean, I cook—you know I cook—but I don’t…cook. Not anything fancy. So…?”
He hesitated, feeling devilish for no reason and having no luck in pushing it down. “I thought maybe you’d learned, taken lessons or something.”
She widened her eyes in what was obviously sheer horror. “Why on earth would you think that?”
“Well, you’re here all day alone, and bored, or so you said. I thought maybe you’d taken up a hobby.”
He thought it obvious that he was only kidding, but she looked all the more horrified. And maybe that was understandable—this was the first time he’d done anything even remotely light-hearted since laying eyes on her.
And actually, that was a bad idea. Hadn’t he just told himself not to go soft on her? There would be enough of that once they assumed their roles as husband and wife.
“Tate, if you were going to write things like that into my character, you could’ve at least warned me and I’d have studied a cookbook last night or something. Now, the way I see it is—you were right and I’m not bored. And I’ve been far too busy eating bonbons and lounging around in diamonds to cook anything at all. Which leaves one question. What are we going to do about dinner?”
This time he made sure to keep his face expressionless. It was much safer not to let her know he was even mildly entertained by anything she did. “Don’t worry. I have a chef coming at five-thirty. She’ll serve us at seven, then clean up the mess when we’re through.”
Kimberly let out a sigh of relief. “A chef. That’s good.” Yet then she was suddenly looking around, no longer in awe, but as if something terrible had just struck her. “You know, Tate, this is a big place. Shouldn’t we have housekeepers or something? Shouldn’t we have a full-time chef?”
“Already thought of that,” he said, remaining emotionless. “I’ll just mention to Carlo that our housekeeper, who doubles as our chef, asked for the weekend off. So when she leaves after dinner, it won’t seem weird.”
“Ah,” she said, nodding. “Okay—that’ll work.”
“Of course it will,” he answered absently. And from his peripheral vision, he saw her standing there watching him watch TV, since he’d made a point of returning his attention to it already. And maybe she was waiting for him to say something more, keep this merry little conversation going, but nope—that was a bad idea. Conversation over.
This will be simple as long as you remember the rules.
No more Mr. Nice Guy.
Scents of something succulent met Kimberly’s nose as she moved delicately down the stairway in five-inch heels. But she couldn’t look forward to dinner, or enjoy her surroundings, or even anticipate the thrill of satisfaction in the job that was about to begin. Her chest felt tight and her throat did, too. And the butterflies that had invaded her stomach while she dressed had suddenly fled the scene—because apparently someone was releasing hand grenades in there now.
She wasn’t nervous about the job.
She wasn’t nervous about Carlo Coletti.
She was nervous about Max. About Max s
eeing her.
Odd, for a second there earlier, when they’d been discussing the whole dinner thing, she’d thought she’d sensed something new in him—something fresh and almost friendly. A hint of a smile and maybe even a soft tone. But things had changed suddenly and quickly as he’d put his typical wall up between them and she’d been forced to change her opinion. Max, friendly? Nope, she’d clearly been imagining things. Now she had to wonder all the more how things would be between them as they progressed into the charade part of this case, and as she became his “wife.”
At the bottom of the stairs she approached a mosaic-framed mirror that reflected her image from head to toe. Her hair was bunched up on top of her head, tiny wisps of it falling over her cheeks and nape. Along with a “wedding ring” pilfered from the black box upstairs, she wore a pair of fake diamond earrings that dangled and sometimes tickled her neck, and a thin fake diamond necklace that she thought of as a sort of teaser for their guest.
But the real event was clearly taking place below her neck. The dress was slinky and black and short and hugged her every curve. Tiny straps held up the low-cut bodice, which was built for cleavage and definitely delivered. She was pretty sure she’d been a size smaller when she’d bought this dress. And it had looked fine on her then, hanging looser and more comfortably around her. But now—well, she finally understood how it was meant to fit. She barely recognized herself. And she couldn’t help wondering how Max would react to her like this.
She tried to tell herself that her anxiety was because she wanted to please him as an employee wishes to please a boss, that she wanted him to think she was the perfect woman for this job. But it was more than that. She’d tried to tell herself ever since she’d started feeling it that it wasn’t more than that, but it was. And even worse, it was something sexual. Since the moment she’d put on this dress and thought of Max seeing her in it, her entire body had been supercharged with an undeniable sexual tension.
