"Elizabeth is moldering in her grave, as you very well know! Worms are on her mind, not love."
"I'm not as sure of that as I used to be," Luke said, taking her hand in his. The warmth of his touch began to melt the ice that had been clogging Tess's veins. "You're very like Elizabeth, you know. You're beautiful, intelligent, good with your hands, hence your success in your checkered career."
"Don't forget my appendix scar," Tess said, happily melting in his gaze.
"Ah, yes," he murmured, "we mustn't forget that."
Hodgkins appeared in the next moment, a mobile telephone in his hand. "An overseas call from a Mr. Bainbridge for you, Miss Alcott," he intoned.
Tess blinked. She had nearly kissed Luke!
"Thank you, Hodgkins," she said, and it came from the very depths of her soul. Who would have thought she'd have Hodgkins to thank for pulling her back from the brink of disaster?
With a glance at Luke, she sat up and took the phone, forcing a calm mask onto her face. The last thing she needed was for her other life to blow this job wide open. "Cyril?" she said into the receiver. "I'm on vacation, why are you calling?" Mr. Bainbridge took several minutes to lay the facts before her. "Look, I pulled the heist months ago," Tess said at last, "just so you could ride into Mendoza's compound like his own personal white knight. I'm out of it now." Mr. Bainbridge took several more minutes to describe the difficulties he had encountered. "My heart bleeds for you," Tess retorted. "Look, the timeline was set nine months ago. I've done my part and now it's up to you. Think of it as honoring a contract. I have a lawyer known as the Grim Reaper sitting right here who will undoubtedly be happy to discuss with you the ramifications of breaking a contract."
"In a hot minute," Luke assured her.
Tess grinned at him and then, thoroughly distracted, turned back to the phone. "Stop complaining and just do the job, Cyril. And don't call me again unless there's a real emergency, okay? I'm working on my tan." She winced and hung up the phone. "I never knew a man to be so violently opposed to tanning."
Luke laughed. It was deep, rich laughter that warmed her soul. "Business call?" he asked.
"Mm," Tess said, thinking rapidly. "Cyril Bainbridge is doing clean-up duty on an old job and he's run into some trouble with a … witness. Now Cyril may look like the Devil incarnate, but he's from Kentucky and that man could sweet-talk Queen Elizabeth into converting to Buddhism if he set his mind to it, so there really is no excuse for him calling me up to complain."
"Is this the same Cyril who bruised your arm last week?"
"He likes to keep busy and WEB obliges."
"Do you like working for WEB?" Luke asked, sitting up, his bronzed skin nearly dry, his swim trunks doing very little to disguise his masculinity.
Tess blinked. WEB. Right, WEB. "Sure. They're a great group of people on the whole," she replied. "And it's fascinating watching how the other half works. I've learned a lot. I'm a much better thief working for WEB than I used to be working on my own."
"Is that what you do? Steal?"
"Oh no, nothing so crass," Tess replied. "I just retrieve items that have gone astray or locate a piece of evidence the authorities need to incarcerate less talented operators."
Luke frowned. "It sounds dangerous."
"Not really. I usually have to work with a team and we watch out for each other. Besides, I'm good at what I do."
"You are superb at what you do. But do you like what you do?"
"It keeps me from getting rusty."
"But do you like it?"
Tess sighed as she brushed a few stray drops of water from her leg. He was persistent, she would give him that. And sweet. He'd called her superb! "Well, I guess I'm a little bored by it all. When I was working for myself, I stole beautiful things: jewelry, artwork. I wasn't interested in stocks or stamps or rare coins. It was beauty I wanted in my life. And now the things I steal are the farthest thing from beautiful. It's kind of killing my interest in the work. I've looked at other careers, but nothing has caught my fancy yet."
"I imagine it would be hard to shift gears," Luke agreed. He stopped, his eyes suddenly wide as he stared at her. "Then again, maybe not. How did you do that?"
"Do what?" Tess asked innocently.
A grin tugged at his lips. "How did you shift the entire dynamics of our combative relationship into a downright pleasant conversation about exercise, Elizabeth, and careers?"
"Oh, dear," Tess murmured, "was I being obvious?"
"You haven't got a microorganism of obvious in you, and you know it!"
Tess grinned. She couldn't help it. He'd seen right through her and, rather than getting upset because he'd blown her cover, she liked it. She liked that he was that good, that quick, that smart. She liked that she could do her job—get Luke onto her side—and enjoy doing it. Maybe she didn't have to fight her feelings so desperately. Maybe they were the key to pulling this thing off.
"Fighting's only fun for a little while," she said. "Then it gets boring. I thought I'd try something different. Like it?"
"Very much," Luke said, his emerald eyes darkening.
* * *
CHAPTER EIGHT
« ^ »
Luke reached out to push a stray curl from Tess's temple. It was a mistake, of course, because his fingers brushed against her skin and now he had to kiss her. He had been aching to kiss her all morning and nothing, not even a return to sanity, was going to stop him.
"I like it almost as much as I like kissing you," he said.
"Luke, no—" she whispered as he cupped the back of her head.
"Yes," he groaned.
Her eyes—full of surprise and fear and longing—slowly drifted shut just before his lips brushed hers once, twice, the soft caress sending tremors through his veins.
Sweet, she was so sweet. His mouth met hers again with all of the tenderness he had never known dwelled in his soul and he felt her tremble. Her full lips returned the kiss as she made a sound that might have been a purr or a sigh of pain.
He hauled her into his arms then, rolled her onto her back, and kissed her, hungrily, eagerly, fiercely. Her arms went around his neck, her body arching into his as she met him with her own hunger, her own soft cries of pleasure and need.
He could feel every delicious inch of her against him, her nipples hardening against his chest, and suddenly he wanted more, needed more, had to have more. He had to have her.
It was that throbbing need that plummeted him back into reality and she came back along with him. They pulled far enough apart to stare at each other, breaths ragged.
"This is insanity," Tess whispered.
"Good word for it," Luke gasped.
There was amazement in her eyes. And terror. "Look," she said in an unconscious parody of reasonableness, "this has got to stop here and now. We're on the opposite sides of a very big fence. We shouldn't be … meeting in the middle. You don't trust me, you think I'm a fraud. I can't trust you, it's too dangerous. We have no common meeting ground. We shouldn't be doing … this."
"I absolutely agree," Luke said with a bitter laugh as he sat back up. "I hate the sweet taste of you on my mouth. I hate the way your body fits so perfectly against mine. I hate having to be suspicious of your every word, your every touch. You are every dangerous female I've ever known wrapped up in one taunting package, and I hate all of it!"
"Well, thanks a lot!" Tess shouted back at him as she surged to her feet. "Do you think I like this path we've stumbled on? Do you think I like the fact that you can kiss me with one breath and lambaste me as every scheming, manipulative female ever born with the next? Do you think I like the suspicion in your eyes every time you look at me?"
"Fair enough," Luke said, standing up before her, arms folded across his chest. "I'm not too happy about that, either. So go ahead, Tess, banish the suspicion from my eyes."
"How?"
"Tell me all about yourself. Who are you really?"
"I don't know!"
"Why are you here,
then?"
She looked away for a moment, and then glared up at him, her expression mutinous. "The Farleigh. I want the Farleigh."
He couldn't hold back his smile. "Liar," he said softly. "You want me."
"Yes, dammit!" she retorted just before her arms went around his neck and she kissed him, hard.
"Tess," he moaned, kissing her again and again. That one word seemed to say everything. It filled the hollow in his soul.
"Oh, please!" Tess cried, pulling away. "One of us has got to be reasonable. Just because we enjoy dueling with each other is no reason to get carried away! Couldn't you draw on your puritanical Yankee upbringing and keep me from being this stupid? Bert would be appalled if he ever knew."
"Bert?" Luke politely inquired.
She paled. "My … um … mentor after the Carswells."
"And how did you go from Violet to Bert?"
Tess's head jerked up and she stared at him. "How did you— No, of course you would know about Violet," she said with a wry smile. "Doesn't everyone?"
"You don't have to tell me about her if you don't want to, Tess," he said gently.
"What's to tell? She acted as Bert's go-between with the Carswells. She drove me out of Miami in a very lurid Cadillac, dumped me in Bert's Charleston condo, and disappeared. End of story."
"You mean, Bert was the client with particular tastes?"
"You could put it like that, I suppose."
Luke grabbed her arms and shook her. "Don't treat this so damn casually!"
She stared up at him in utter confusion. "What on earth are you talking about? Bert wasn't her client, he was her pimp, among other things. And as for particular tastes…" Her eyes widened as understanding hit her. "No! You don't think— Luke, he didn't want me for sex. He wanted me for a con he was pulling. I did such a good job, he kept me on with him and helped to make me the thief I am today. I escaped my childhood and adolescence with virginity intact. Nothing happened."
Luke stared down at her a moment. Then he crushed her in his arms, almost squeezing the breath out of her. "Thank God," he said in a ragged voice. "You lived through enough horror without that abuse added to it."
"I never said a word about horror," Tess murmured against his broad chest.
"You don't have to. It shadows your eyes."
"Stop being so damned observant," she said, holding him tighter.
"Sorry. I can't seem to help noticing everything about you: the sexy way your hair tumbles around your head, the little shudder of pleasure that ripples through you whenever I pull you into my arms, those ruthless dimples of yours. It's become a habit and I like it a lot."
"You like the oddest things."
"Tell me about it," Luke groaned. "My life was a straight, steady, uneventful course and then suddenly you barrel in and I'm snooping under beds and disrupting my life and living out of a suitcase and having to fight my hormones every damn minute of the day and I hate it! I want sanity back in my world. I want peace and quiet. But more than anything, I want to kiss you and to hell with why you're here and to hell with my job!"
His mouth found hers, claiming it, claiming her. She writhed against him, pressing into him, her mouth eagerly accepting his tongue as it plunged into her, both of them moaning at the contact.
He knew then. Knew that she needed this, too. Knew that this was real and it didn't matter what con she was running, it didn't matter why she was here. It only mattered that she was in his arms, feverishly returning his kisses, because this was truth, this was honesty. Nothing else mattered.
He tore his mouth from hers to drag oxygen into his starved lungs and heard her own ragged breathing. A new smile touched his lips. He wasn't alone in this, whatever this was.
Then memories of Margo—of her kisses and her lies—threw him mercilessly back into reality. He stared at Tess with growing horror.
"I'm sorry," he said, abruptly backing away, staring down at the anguish on Tess's face, wanting to kiss it away. "I'm acting like a fool and taking you with me. You're right, this has got to stop. We have no common ground. We just need to remember that and we'll do fine." He stared at her lips swollen by his kisses. "Fine," he said raggedly, just before he turned and headed for the house and sanctuary and some form of sanity.
Instead, he found Jane going through a briefcase she had set down on a satinwood table in the Grand Hall. She looked him up and down, critically.
"I'm not sure," she said, "but I doubt if you are wearing appropriate office attire.
Luke had the most awful urge to blush. "I was swimming."
"Among other things," Jane said coolly. "If I didn't know better, I'd swear you were courting a thief."
Luke's mouth fell open. "I would no more court a thief than I would … swing from a chandelier!"
"You are still suspicious of Tess, then?"
"Any sane person would be!"
"Perhaps, but then, trust is not exactly your forte, is it? That's just one of the many things you have in common with Tess. She doesn't trust anyone or anything but herself, either."
"Tess Alcott and I have nothing in common. Nothing."
"Piffle," Jane stated.
Luke cringed. She was right. But did she know how right?
"Aside from your mutual inability to trust anyone," she continued, "you are both frighteningly intelligent, you both hide a good deal of passion behind a mask of calm, you both chose difficult careers and are at the top of your fields. You have also both thrown yourselves into your work to exclude any and all human relationships because you both have been repeatedly hurt by others in the past. And you both believe, erroneously I might add, that you neither need nor want love in your lives. Shall I go on?"
Damn, she was good. "I have to change," Luke said, heading for the stairs.
"Yes, and more than your clothes," Jane called after him.
He wanted to stick his tongue out at her. It took everything he had to remember he was no longer seven years old. Jane's words, Tess's kisses, and memories of Margo were a vise twisting his brain into mush. He was in deep trouble.
The phone on his bedside table began to ring as he closed his bedroom door behind him.
"There's a joker in the deck," Leroy Baldwin said by way of hello.
Luke's heart clenched. "What do you mean?" he demanded.
"Have you hired another firm to watch Tess Alcott?"
"What? No, of course not! Why?"
"Because my surveillance team nearly fell on top of another surveillance team this morning. My people were very unnerved, and not just because they watched you making out with the suspect in one of the biggest fraud cases we've ever handled. Do you know what you're doing?"
"No."
"Oh, that's very reassuring. Is Tess Alcott pulling a Margo?"
"I don't know," Luke said grimly. "What about the other team?"
"My people are pros, but they didn't spot these guys until this afternoon. The thing is, this second team is working with limited equipment: binoculars, that kind of thing. No cameras, no microphones. And all they care about is Tess Alcott. They don't follow anyone else. I don't like it. Something is going on that I don't understand."
Luke's long fingers drummed on the bedside table. "Can you cover this second surveillance team?"
"It's already done. As soon as I find out what they're up to, I'll let you know."
"This whole thing is beginning to give me a migraine."
"Not me. I've just got the heebie-jeebies."
Luke's throat ached, but he had a job to do, whether he and Tess were akin to each other or not. "Oh, hell," Luke muttered. "You ever come across anyone named Bert attached to Tess?"
"Not a soul."
"I think … you'd better dig deeper."
"You got it."
Luke hung up the phone feeling guilty and ashamed of himself. How could he kiss Tess, need Tess, and still try to break her story?
He stalked into the bathroom, stripped off his swim trunks, and stepped into the shower. But the water
washed away none of the guilt. From early childhood, Tess had warped herself to fit others' demands and expectations, just as he had done. She walked through the world alone, as he did. They were akin to each other, and Luke felt as if he had just betrayed her.
* * *
CHAPTER NINE
« ^ »
Tess watched Luke stalk back into the house and wondered if she was watching Dr. Jekyll or Mr. Hyde. Kissing her passionately one minute, pushing her roughly away the next. Why was he as messed up as she was? Why was he fighting her so hard? How could he just walk away from her as if he didn't feel everything they had just shared? Was this some kind of con of his own? Or did he really want her? And why did she want that answer to be yes? It was time and past time to get some answers.
Tess waited until Luke and Jane had left for work, then she got into a Mercedes convertible—Jane had given her carte blanche to the Cushman garage—and headed for town. In less than an hour, she pulled the Mercedes into her underground parking garage and then rode the elevator to the top floor of the restored ten-story Edwardian apartment building. She walked down the thickly carpeted hallway, pulled out her key, unlocked her door, and stepped with relief into her flat.
"Honey, I'm home!" she called out.
A tall woman with long, thick black hair, silver-gray eyes, dressed in lavender stirrup pants and a matching sweater, padded barefoot out of the kitchen.
"Hard day at the office, dear?" the woman inquired, her Irish accent lyrical and lovely.
Tess grimaced. "It has not been pleasant. What's happening, Gladys?"
Now Gladys grimaced. "Lord, I hate that name. You're a nomenclature sadist, you know that, Tess?"
Tess grinned. "If you can't have fun on a job, what's the point?"
"Were you followed?"
"Of course I was followed. Bert's henchmen probably have orders to keep within five feet of me at all times upon pain of death. But this little visit will seem innocuous enough. Besides, my unplanned trip has a reason that will satisfy him."
"Why are you here?"
STOLEN HEARTS Page 10
