A Thief's Heart

by A Caprice

  “Is it something like all archivists are librarians but not all librarians are archivists?” The suspicious sparkle in his eyes made her want to throw a roll at his head until she realized just how petty she sounded.

  She pushed her plate away. “ARC’s librarian and I have had some differences in the past, so I’m probably not at my most objective. Can I go back and answer your question again?” She didn’t wait for him to respond. “Yes, an archivist is similar to a librarian, and librarians do important work.” Just not the pretentious ARC librarian. “But we have different duties.”

  He rubbed the back of her hand again. “Objectivity can be overrated. I loathed one of my former supervisors, so when I heard that someone had been badmouthing me to the president, I assumed it was him. And I reacted…poorly.” Leaning back, he swirled his chianti. “To retaliate, I installed a virus on his computer. When the I.T. guy was called in to remove it, he discovered evidence that the man had been stealing from the company, and I was promoted to his position.”

  Amanda frowned. “And he wasn’t the one undercutting you?”

  “No, it was another coworker, and it had been a misunderstanding.”

  She rested an elbow on the table. “And what exactly was the moral to that story? That it pays to be sneaky?”

  He grinned, and the look stole her breath. When Gio gave her one of his suave smiles, it was a sight to behold; but when his smile radiated true humor and warmth, it did funny things to her heart.

  “No, cara,” he said. “Although yes, sometimes sneakiness does pay. But my point was that if I had been objective, I would have realized my supervisor had no motive to hurt me. I was doing too much good work for him.” He turned in his chair, his knee brushing against her thigh. He rested his hand on the back of her chair, caging her against the table. “Objectivity is overrated. Sometimes you have to go with your gut. Your intuition.”

  She sucked on her bottom lip. How much did he really trust intuition? If Gio were confronted with her sixth sense, would he believe in her ability or would he be “objective”, thinking her delusional for challenging the known scientific world?

  She swept her gaze over the rigid creases in his slacks. Over his elegant gold watch and up to the stubble darkening his jaw.

  Everything about him seemed earthy. Solid. Grounded in the material world. He might think he trusted his gut, but when the chips fell, she bet he’d fall in step with common thought. “You don’t strike me as the type to go off instinct. I suspect that most everything you do is calculated.”

  Little lines appeared around his mouth. “And you don’t strike me as the quiet librarian type. Excuse me. Archivist. You are the type of woman who demands attention. Why are you hiding out in the bowels of the earth?”

  Demands attention? She didn’t think she had a confidence problem, but she definitely wasn’t the kind of woman who grabbed a man’s notice.

  Her stomach fluttered. Did Gio really see her that way? “My work is wherever the archives are, and ARC’s are in the basement.” She prodded the last of her chicken with her fork. “I don’t hide out there but I do find the solitude…comforting. Groups of people and I don’t get along.”

  “What a coincidence.” He leaned into her and lowered his voice half an octave. “I also prefer one-on-one situations.”

  The hair rose on Amanda’s nape, and she shivered with pleasure. Italian men flirted as easily as breathing. Knowing that still didn’t make it easy to break his hold over her. She dragged her eyes from his and took a deep breath. That didn’t help. He smelled wonderful, like spice cookies.

  She crossed her legs, pressing her thighs together to relieve the growing ache. “My work suits me.”

  He sat back in his chair, taking his heat with him, and a sigh escaped her lips. “It is important that you do what you love, even if that means researching little green men. Having fun with your job makes for a happy life.”

  “I enjoy the work. It is interesting.” Amanda chewed her bottom lip.

  “But?” he asked.

  She finished her wine. What the hell? It couldn’t hurt to tell Gio some of the truth. She was hardly likely to see him again after the decoder was found. And it had been so long since she’d really talked to someone. She hadn’t made many friends since she moved to Geneva and she missed the intimacy of opening up about her problems.

  “Well, the other archivists and researchers are great.” She circled the rim of her glass with the pad of her finger. “Some really brilliant people. I just…I had hoped when I joined ARC that I would become part of their team. But I still feel like an outsider. I know that sounds silly.” She cleared her throat. “I’ve just never felt like I belonged anywhere, and when I learned about ARC, I thought I would finally be among other…uh, like-minded people. But I’m still the joke of the group, the misfit. It was silly to have other expectations.”

  Gio squeezed her hand. He was a very tactile man. Raised in a household where hugs came around only once a year on her birthday, Amanda had to admit that she liked his constant touching. “Not silly. And you are not a joke.”

  Amanda pushed aside her past hurts and smiled self-deprecatingly. “Well, I am definitely good for some laughs. I’d tell you about the flying gargoyle and the stained-glass window incident in Paris but then I’d be violating my nondisclosure agreement.”

  His smile didn’t reach his eyes. “Well, let us get down to work instead. What can you tell me about the Newton decoder?”

  Amanda’s shoulders relaxed as the conversation moved to an area where she had more solid footing. “It was devised by Newton in 1682 and he used it for his personal correspondence with a few select friends, having built and sent decoders to four others. Not only was Newton a brilliant physicist and mathematician, but he was also heavily involved in alchemy and mysticism. It was his work in alchemy that Newton most wanted to keep secret. So he wrote in code. Of the five decoders that we know Newton made, only one still exists today. The one that was stolen.” Amanda reached for the bottle of wine and refilled her glass. She held it up to Gio.

  He shook his head. “And how does it work?”

  “It is really very simple.” She hesitated as Gio’s eyes narrowed. “It’s a basic substitution cipher.”

  “It cannot be that basic, or Newton’s letters would have been easily decrypted.”

  Unsure why he sounded defensive, Amanda continued slowly. “Well, once you have the decoder, it’s easy. It is,” she said at his derisive snort. “I’m sure you’d figure it out in no time if you had the decoder.”

  “Well, since I do not, why don’t you explain it to me?” He sat back and folded his arms across his chest, the fabric of his sweater pulling tight across his biceps.

  “The first line of the encrypted document is the key. The number of words in that line will equal the letter ‘A’. In a basic alphanumeric cipher, each letter of the alphabet corresponds to a number, one through twenty-six. If there are five words in the first line, then ‘A’ starts at number five, ‘B’ is number six, and so on until ‘Z’, which is number four.”

  Amanda looked to see if Gio was following. He nodded his understanding, and she continued. “On Newton’s decoder, the letters of the alphabet are fixed around a cylindrical base. They’re in a random order. The cylinder contains six rows of letters, four letters to a row, except for two rows that have five letters. If the ‘A’ corresponds to the number five that means that the row that holds the ‘A’ is designated the fifth row. The rest of the cipher flows easily. Two words on the encrypted document equal one letter on the decoder. The number of letters in the first word, let’s call it the ‘row word’, equals what row to work from, and the number of letters in the second word, the ‘letter word’, indicate how many letters, starting in that row, to count to.”

  Gio leaned forward. “So, if the first two words of a letter are ‘my cat’, you would look to the second row, in relation to the ‘A’ row being the fifth, and the th
ird letter in that row?”

  “That’s it. Easy peasy.”

  “But you cannot have an entire letter written in words consisting of six letters or less. It would look like a child wrote it.”

  “True,” Amanda said. “If the ‘letter word’ has thirteen letters in it, you would start counting in the correct row and continue to the third or fourth row until you find your thirteenth letter. If a ‘row word’ has thirteen letters in it, you add the one and the three to come up with the number four.”

  “And if the ‘row word’ number you come up with is an eight? There are only six rows, after all,” he said.

  “The writers of those encrypted messages had to make sure that didn’t happen. There was some effort upon their part in their word choice.”

  Gio sent her a dark look. “And how long did it take you to figure this out?”

  “About a half an hour. But even though the cipher is simple, it still is a pain in the ass to use. I have two years’ worth of correspondence to decode. It is horribly boring and time-consuming. As I said in your car on the way over here, I could almost be happy that someone swiped it last night, except that it’s my responsibility to protect the damned thing.”

  Gio blew out a breath then gave her a wry smile. “Well, you really do have an extraordinary ability when it comes to languages. Encrypted or not.”

  “Oh, no. My talent doesn’t extend to codes and ciphers, just the base languages.” Amanda froze. She forgot he didn’t know of her special gift. He was just speaking of normal abilities. He wrinkled his forehead in confusion and Amanda stood abruptly, her stomach clenching. “Are you finished? I’ll just put the plates away and get out some cheesecake.”

  She hurried into the kitchen and scraped the extra food into the trash. Turning to the sink, she took a deep breath. She was too relaxed around this man. All sorts of secrets were being revealed. She needed to put up her guard and watch her mouth. Turning on the hot water tap, Amanda began to fill the sink with soapy water and let the billowing steam bathe her face.

  A firm body pressed close behind her. Two arms wrapped around her body and gently placed the wine glasses in the filling sink. “Thank you for dinner, Amanda. Allow me to do the dishes in return.”

  She turned in the enclosure of his arms and looked up at him. In her bare feet, he stood almost a foot taller than her. He was leanly muscled, lithe as a cat. His dark eyes watched her, unblinking. Trapped between the sink and his firm body, Amanda had never felt more like prey, and her body loved it.

  She leaned in closer to him, her nipples brushing against his chest. He smelled of something spicy, something wicked and expensive. A memory bumped up against her mind but was quickly forgotten when his firm thigh pressed between her legs.

  “The dishes can wait,” Amanda said breathily. What was that she had just been thinking? Oh, yeah, she needed to put her guard back up. She leaned back against the sink but could still feel the heat rolling off him. “You don’t need to do anything. You can just go wait for dessert and coffee.”

  He bent down and whispered in her ear. “And if I do not want to wait for dessert?” He licked over the shell of her ear and began nibbling at the lobe.

  “Oh, my.” Amanda clutched at his biceps to steady herself. He was quite good at that. Quite talented at this whole seduction bit. They must have a class in Italian schools on how to make a woman’s knees go weak. In comparison, American men got failing scores with their tawdry pick-up lines and swipe-right dates.

  He licked his tongue over the shell of her ear, and a shiver shot straight to her core.

  Really, who would it hurt? A hot affair between two consenting adults seemed almost like a duty for an American working in Europe. She arched into him, and he trailed one of his hands down her spine to rest on her lower back.

  “Are you sure there isn’t something I can do for you, cara?” He pulled back and smiled, a wicked glint lighting his eyes. “Some way to thank you?” He leaned in again and this time brushed his lips against hers, whisper-soft at first. His tongue danced along the seam to her mouth.

  She parted her lips, and Gio took full advantage. He held the back of her head, angling her as he wanted. His tongue plundered her mouth, tasting every corner then sweeping up to caress the sensitive roof.

  Amanda melted against him. A small part of her whispered that this was weird, that gorgeous men didn’t just grope her in her kitchen after she almost poisoned them with her cooking.

  She stomped on that part of her, breaking its neck and shutting it up.

  She could be quite vicious against her conscience when it warned her away from sexy men. Sexy men and cheesecake. She didn’t let anything get between her and those two things, not even her own better sense.

  So, she tucked her body closer, ran her hands over the hard muscles of his back, and let herself enjoy the wonder that was Gio d’Onofrio in her kitchen, in her mouth.

  Her hands weren’t the only ones to wander. Gio cupped her breast, his palm hot even through her shirt. He feathered his thumb over her nipple, hardening the peak, making her ache.

  He slid his other hand down her leg. He grabbed the back of her thigh and lifted her leg, wrapping it around his waist.

  His cock pulsed against her core.

  If it wasn’t for the sink at her back and Gio pasted to her front, she would have gone down. Her knees were as weak as jello. Her hips moved with a mind of their own, shamelessly thrusting against his erection. It had been too long since she’d had anything other than a self-induced orgasm.

  And she wanted one with Gio. Needed one. His luxurious scent wrapped around her, heightening her senses. He tasted of burnt marinara, but even that was a flavor she wanted to indulge in when it came from Gio’s lips. His fingers were a seduction, and she couldn’t wait to see what he could do with his whole body.

  Amanda whimpered, and he deepened the kiss. His tongue parried with hers, stroking back and forth in a rhythm as old as time. Her core clenched and her body ached to be touched by this man everywhere. She was so wet for him. Her panties felt positively sopping.

  She drew her eyebrows together, trying to clear her head. Gio’s tongue in her mouth made that difficult. But it wasn’t normal to feel this wet. In fact…

  She broke away with a gasp. “Gio! The sink.” She spun to turn off the water on the overflowing sink…

  …and slipped on the slick floor. Her arm flung out, smacking Gio in the face when he reached for her. She grabbed for anything she could hold onto and scissored her legs frantically, trying to regain her footing. One leg clipped Gio in the knee, and they both went down.

  She landed mostly on top of him. She didn’t know how he managed to turn his body fast enough to take the brunt of the fall, but he had. They lay there for a second, stunned, his breath wheezing against her cheek.

  “Are…are you okay?” she finally asked. Her cheeks burned as she scanned his body, looking for damage.

  “Fine,” he said shortly, his eyes focused on the ceiling.

  Amanda felt the water soaking into Gio’s side. “Damn, it’s still running.” She got to her hands and knees. “I’ll turn it off and get some towels.”

  He grabbed her around the waist and pulled Amanda to his other side, away from the sink. “Stay there.” He sucked in a deep breath, then slowly released it. He looked at Amanda and his eyes narrowed. “Just stay there. I’ll get it.” He rolled to his feet and turned off the tap. Looking around, he grabbed some kitchen towels hanging from the door of the oven and tossed them on the puddle. Without another glance at her, he strode out of the kitchen, presumably heading for the bathroom and more towels.

  Amanda let her head fall back against the hard floor. What was wrong with her? Disaster seemed to follow her everywhere. She climbed carefully to her feet and swiped at her skirt. At least she didn’t have to worry about a loose tongue during pillow talk. Gio wouldn’t want to get within five feet of her again.

  He came
back in holding two fluffy towels. “You moved,” he said accusingly.

  “I couldn’t just lie on the floor.”

  “You could have hurt yourself getting up on the wet tile,” he scolded.

  Amanda pressed her fists into her hips. Had she thought she liked his bossiness? Well, not when it wasn’t during sexy-times. His condescension grated against her raw nerves. She knew she was a little clumsy, but the fact he acted like she wasn’t even competent enough to stand on her own two feet still stung. “Don’t speak to me like I’m a child. This was hardly my fault.”

  His eyes widened in disbelief.

  “You distracted me!” She pulled her wet blouse away from her body and squeezed water out. “I would have been done with the dishes and halfway through a slice of cheesecake if you hadn’t come in and stuck your tongue down my throat.”

  “My mistake, obviously.” He covered the remaining water with the towels, the cotton turning dark as it soaked up the spill. “I need to go. My clothes are wet.”

  She dropped her gaze to the front of his slacks. The way her water-logged blouse was sticking to her skin was nothing to how the fabric of his pants cupped all his lovely bulges. His slacks were wet and clinging from the tops of his firm thighs to—

  She glanced away, a bead of sweat rolling down her back.

  “It was a lovely dinner, Amanda. Perhaps we can meet again tomorrow to discuss where we go from here.”

  “Go from here?” She knew where she wanted to go. Straight to the bedroom with Gio. Or the living room sofa. Even the dining room table. She wasn’t picky.

  “With the case,” he clarified.

  She nodded, her shoulders sagging. Right. He’d only flirted with her earlier because that was his nature. It came as easily as breathing and hadn’t meant he had any particular interest in her.

  Exhaustion weighed her body. Why did she find it so difficult to interact with people? For tonight, for Gio, she just wanted to be a normal woman. One who didn’t cause destruction wherever she went.

  “Lunch tomorrow?” he asked.