by Pamela Clare
“You didn’t want others to define you,” he said finally. “You wanted to define yourself.”
“That’s what you think, huh?” Not exactly right, though not so crazy.
“You were in juvie with those girls, but it started before that,” he tried. “It’s something with your friends.”
The intensity of his attention was unsettling; she didn’t like being onstage like this; she preferred to work in the shadows, unlocking safes, unlocking clients. “The boyfriend doesn’t get that part until the third date.”
He came around the counter, seeming energized. “You go back with them, probably to grade school. Nobody else saw what you could be except those girls. You believed in each other. You made girlish vows to fight back. And all the people who read you wrong, all the people who underestimated you, they could fuck themselves.”
What the hell was this guy? “I’m not playing this with you.”
“You would show everybody. You vowed to make them pay.”
Her pulse raced. “Not even close. It was never about showing anybody or making them pay,” she whispered. “It was never about that.”
He caged her against the refrigerator with his arms, drew near her, all lips and peanut butter breath. She realized only then that she’d given him answers in the form of negatives. “What, then?”
She felt flower magnets at her back. The idea of his hand between her legs blotted out every thought in her head.
“Tell me what it was about, Angel.” His whisper was seductive. She felt the door between reality and his fantasy edge open, imagined his fingers sliding along her sex. “Tell me why. Tell me the secret.”
She pushed him away. “Fuck off. Don’t mess with my head—that’s not in the bargain. And we didn’t have sex the first night and that’s final.”
“Okay.” He flicked his hair out of his eyes and grabbed another rice cake. “The second date, then. We saw a movie.”
“Fine,” she said. “Since we’re dealing with people like you and Borgola, I guess it’s believable enough.”
“Don’t put me in with Borgola,” he said. “I’m not like him.”
“That’s not exactly talk that will impress the boss. Don’t you admire him? Aspire to be like him?”
“Let’s just figure out what movie we saw.” They compared notes on what they’d seen and settled on a recent superhero flick.
“Third date. I made you dinner here,” she said.
“And you’ve been crazy about me ever since.”
“Yeah, yeah,” she said. “What do I think you do?”
“You know I’m a security guy. I used to be a private investigator in Michigan.”
“I hate mushrooms,” she said.
“I hate dill.”
“That can be our bond,” she said. “I hate dill, too. That can be the centerpiece of our relationship. And some people cook with it exclusively. Have you noticed that?”
“This can work.” A little smile appeared on his face. “Though that’s hardly the centerpiece in our relationship.”
“I thought you wanted to leave out the part that you’re blackmailing me. Threatening my friends.” She said that as much for herself as for him. “And by the way, when does Aggie go free?”
“It’s looking like they’ll have her free tonight.” He turned. “Let me see what you packed. I want to make sure you’re bringing some hot dresses. Like you really want to impress.”
“Hot dresses are not my safecracking outfit of choice.”
“What is?”
“Black one-piece and mask.”
“A cat suit?”
“With a tool belt and a holster.”
He went still. Swallowed. “That’s kind of hot, honey.” From his expression she guessed he was imagining her in it.
“It’s hotter in concept than reality, Cole.”
“I doubt that.”
She smiled. Heaven help her, she liked him. In spite of everything, she liked him. So messed up.
“However, it won’t do for a visit to casa Borgola,” he continued. “You need to bring a hot dress and a swimsuit, too.”
“A swimsuit? No swimsuits,” she said. She’d seen the girls in the pool, jumping around for all to see. Oh, she would hate that.
“That’s a deal breaker,” he said. “You gotta do the swimsuit. It’s part of the cover.”
She closed her eyes. “I don’t see how this can work.”
“Come on. We’re in this together.”
She looked up at him, wanting badly to believe that they were in it together, that she wasn’t alone in it. She’d felt alone for so long. Being with her girlfriends the night before had thrown that into painfully stark relief.
“Let’s see your closet. I’ll help you,” he said. And then, “We’ll be amazing together.”
“Who’s saying that? My partner against Borgola or my fake boyfriend?”
He seemed actually thoughtful for a moment. “Both,” he said. “Come on. I have a persona with him, and I need us to make sense.”
She regarded him warily and then led him into the bedroom. Her suitcase was open on the bed.
They chose a selection of two dresses. He threw out her cat suit. “I’m going to recommend casualwear for the safecracking.”
“You know where the safe is yet? Did the tracking thing work?”
“The trackers are operational, but he hasn’t moved them out of his office.”
“Could that be where the secret safe is?”
“No way. The stones are in his desk, probably a locked drawer, but he’s got to transfer them soon.”
“That’s a lot of money to be leaving lying around,” she said. “You don’t think he suspects?”
“There’s always that chance.”
“How big a chance?”
“Big enough.”
“Crap,” she said. “What’s so damn important in that safe?”
“Information.”
“And you have to get this stuff? It has to be ASAP?”
“That’s right,” he said. “It’ll be fine. This thing is going to turn out okay.” He paused. “It has to.”
Ah, the desperation in his voice, the way it had to turn out okay, which in no way meant it would turn out okay. She knew it like an old familiar song—two notes come on and you could sing the whole thing, complete with gusty breaths and guitar solos. Her men were always on a self-destructive path, and it was always too late to save them. The familiarity would be perversely comforting if it didn’t involve running back into Borgola’s clutches.
Her men.
Had she really thought of him like that? Well, they had had sex, in a kind of alternate realm. She was still hot from it.
“You got swimwear in there?” he asked, startling her.
“Seriously?”
“Tell me you have a bikini.”
She did, but she also had fire-engine-red one-piece that looked great with her dark hair. She grabbed it out of her drawer.
“Cole’s girlfriend wears heels to the pool,” he said.
“I don’t know about this. I would never wear heels with a swimsuit. Borgola’s not an idiot. Darling.”
“We’ll pull it off,” he said.
“We’ll see.”
“No. Not we’ll see. We will.” He got this stormy, serious look suddenly, and he put out his hands. She regarded them warily. “Come on,” he said. She relented, resting her hands in his. He squeezed. “We’re going to be amazing and come though this like magic, okay?”
And suddenly she felt not so alone. And like things might turn out.
Until she realized he was saying it for himself, too.
We’re going to be amazing.
What the hell. She’d always had been a sucker for a good fantasy. “I’ll bring my lucky lipstick,” she said.
Chapter Nine
Angel and Cole grabbed a bite at a deli and discussed more of their story and how things would go. He warned her about the other security guys—not dangerou
s to her, but crude. Some other women would be there, and a lot of them were prostitutes. It was the culture of the place, he said.
Great.
And suddenly they were riding in through those gates again. Angel couldn’t believe it.
They cleared the gates and headed up the driveway toward the five-story white stucco mansion with its bright red tile roof and trim and grand wings and balconies. Built in the 1920s, she guessed, probably for somebody in the film industry. And far too beautiful to be in the hands of a monster like Borgola.
Cole pulled around back, past grand red tile stairs that led down to an emerald-green lawn and over to the very side, the entrance to a far wing.
“You sure he won’t recognize me from the party?” she asked.
“Without those boobs and all that makeup?” He snorted, like the very idea was ridiculous. Cole had firm opinions on things like that. He seemed perfectly at home in the enemy camp, too. He still hadn’t gotten the location of the safe, though. That worried her. She suspected it worried him, too.
“Like I said, I’m going to be a little different in there,” he said. “More possessive.”
“Do you open doors for me?” she asked.
“Yeah,” he said. “A little bit caveman.”
“And do you have an unnaturally high opinion of your sexual prowess like you do in real life?”
“Be serious, Angel. You need to get into this part. An actor doesn’t just walk on camera in character. He works up to it.”
“I don’t need lessons from you on how to pull this off.”
“Humor me. I’m the kiss-up security guard and wanna-be tough guy. You’re my fawning new girlfriend. We need to be seamless with it. There are eyes and ears in the hallways and a lot of other spaces, so stay in character.”
“I know where there’re cameras,” she said. “We ripped this place off right under your nose, remember?”
He didn’t reply, just shut off the truck and opened his door. She opened her door. “Close it,” he snapped.
“What?”
“Close the damn door. You’re already out of character.”
She closed it.
He walked around and opened her door for her, then he took her hand and helped her down.
“Sheesh,” she said.
“I’m serious. What do you do now?”
She smiled, looking around. “This place is amazing, honey. I think I’m the luckiest woman in the world.”
“Better. People could be watching us out here, you know.” He shut the door and took her suitcase out of the back. Then he hooked his arm around her neck, Neanderthal-style, and they headed down the walk and in through the side door.
The barracks wing, it was called—there was a note of sarcasm in his voice when he told her that. She wasn’t the only one not perfectly in character.
The hallway smelled like meat and smoke and something minty. Even in these back areas designed for staff, the proportions were stately and the decorative molding was intact. It really was a gem of a home. Did Cole imagine that he and his people would be taking it over when he got whatever he was going for?
Cole grunted hellos to a couple of scary-looking guys heading the other way.
“Home sweet home,” Cole said, unlocking a door with the number 23 painted on it.
Apparently Borgola’s security guys didn’t get much in the way of accommodations. His room was simple, nothing more than a giant bedroom with a kitchenette nook at one end. A chair and table stood by the window. She was glad to see he had his own bathroom. The place was like a homier-than-normal hotel room. Angel eyed the small couch. One of them would damn well be sleeping there tonight.
He set her suitcase on the bed and grabbed a white card off the floor near the door, scowled at it. “Boss expects us at the pool at three for cocktail hour.”
“Cocktails at three? I can’t be drunk, Cole.”
He turned to her. “Surely you can manage a drink. You don’t want to insult our host, do you, honey?”
She could handle it. She’d often had to pretend to drink in the jewel thief life.
“I want you to make a good impression on the boss,” he said. “I just know he’ll be as crazy about you as I am.”
“That’s convincing,” she said.
Cole sat at his desk by the window, fired up his tablet, and pulled out his phone.
“Anything?”
“Still nothing,” he said.
“I have a contractor meeting in two days,” she said. “And I’m supposed to go out and meet with a seamstress about a client’s curtains.”
“We’ll see.”
“We’ll see?”
“Yeah.” He typed away, fingers flying.
“What? Just like that? Like I’m your pet?”
“Exactly like that.”
Heat invaded her face. “I really do need to meet that seamstress tomorrow.”
“You prefer door number one? Is that what you’re telling me?”
He didn’t even bother to look up, to hear her answer. She walked around, feeling like she was in a cage. Well, she was in a cage, like a songbird, plucked out of its life in the trees. She picked up a martial arts magazine. “Is this all your stuff?”
“Whose else would it be? The mailman’s?” He stood and pulled off his shirt.
Her breath caught as she took in his broad, muscular shoulders. She looked away, back at the magazine, but the image was there now, damn him.
He wasn’t ripped like a bodybuilder, he was just big and strong, with the kind of strength that came more from working or fighting. His skin was golden, with a smattering of hair across his chest, but she couldn’t get her mind off that arrow of hair pointing down toward the snaps…that he was now unsnapping—she saw it out the corner of her eye.
“What the hell are you doing?” she said.
“Dressing for dinner. We can’t be late. Put on your bathing suit.”
He unsnapped another snap, then smiled a wicked smile when she shot him another glance. “Do I need to do this in private to keep you from ravishing me?” Again he drew his hand over his belly. “I know how you feel about this, girl.”
Would that joke never get old? No. Not as long as he knew it affected her.
He unsnapped another snap. She couldn’t look away.
“And as you know from our dates, it only gets more impressive from here.”
“You are such a freak.” She spun around and unzipped her suitcase. The suitcase was part of her rare, expensive Sunny Soto luggage set. After she’d given up diamonds she’d gone through a designer phase, splurging on the most beautiful, well-made things she could find, needing to surround herself with beauty. It didn’t work any better than the diamonds had.
Just get through this, she told herself, pulling out her red suit, her heels, and her toiletries. With her eyes perfectly straight ahead, she marched into the bathroom and shut the door. She stripped off her clothes, folded them nicely, and set them on the toilet seat. Then she put on her bathing suit. The suit was a strapless one-piece with a gold metal circle between the breasts. The red heels were madly perfect with it. She fixed up her hair and put on lipstick. Not her lucky lipstick. The lucky lipstick was for jobs only.
Then she realized her cover-up was back in her suitcase.
She cursed herself for being so eager to get away from the hotness of a disrobing Cole that she’d forgotten it. She didn’t want to parade out there in her suit like a Miss America contestant, there to be viewed and judged. She’d never liked it when she and her posse had to dress up in slutty outfits for a job, but at least then the sluttiness was a kind of fuck you. This was somehow worse, because she wanted him to approve.
Ugh!
Just another job, she told herself. She took a breath and strolled out like it was nothing.
He looked smart in a black dinner jacket and tie, and his heated gaze made her feel so much in the spotlight that she wanted to run back into the bathroom and slam the door. She forced herself to
stay and root through the suitcase for her white woven cover-up. She found it and quickly pulled it over her head.
When she looked again he was checking his phone. She hated herself for wondering what he’d thought of her.
“Why aren’t you in a swimsuit?” she asked.
“Only the bitches swim.”
She exhaled sharply. “Excuse me? Only the bitches?”
He walked toward her, slowly. “That’s how it is with the boss’s pool parties. I’ve guarded enough of them to know. The guys talk business while they watch the bitches swim. But now the difference is that I get to go to one instead of guard one. With you.” She knew what he was doing, getting in character, wanting her to. He stopped in front of her, unbuttoned a button on her cover-up. “You look hot as hell.”
Her mind went again to the scene in the kitchen. He’d made himself sound dominating, relentless, talented…how much of it was based on reality?
“So modest,” he added.
She pasted on a smile, but she was starting to feel nervous…and only part of it was about seeing Borgola again.
“Are you ready?”
“I’m ready,” she said, smiling through her nerves.
He looked at her closely, an expression of…what? Concern? “Got sunglasses?”
“Yeah.”
He tipped his head at her suitcase. “Bring ‘em.”
She pulled out the glasses set them on top of her head. “Anything else, commandant?”
“That’s more like it, baby.”
Soon they were walking down the hall. Cole looped a heavy arm around her shoulders as they walked, letting his hand dangle down, not quite touching her breast, but he could if he wanted to. Cole the kiss-up caveman guy. It was kind of amusing that he had persona tics for his character.
They headed through an outdoor patio and into another section of the house, through increasingly lavish rooms into the main part of the house with its airy grandeur that even Borgola and his chintzy naked cherubs and garish art and fakey Italian fountains couldn’t ruin. Some of the main room crown molding was painted gold, or maybe it was even gold leaf, and clouds were painted on the highest ceiling—everything too big, too rich, too made-up. The place was the architectural equivalent of a perfect white rose loaded up with perfume and glitter. She smiled at the thought of White Jenny smashing that vase upstairs. Totally the right idea. The vase had been too nice for him.
