Wicked Stage

by Michelle Dayton

  Intrigued, Jess raised an eyebrow. “What is it?”

  “The Bulgarian Blue.”

  At her wide-eyed shrug, he elaborated. “It’s a diamond ring that set a new world record for price per carat at the last auction. Blue diamonds are extremely rare, and this ring has a 10.95 fancy vivid blue diamond—”

  “How much did it sell for?” Jess interrupted.

  Adam rubbed his temple. “Over fifteen million dollars.”

  Chapter Two

  Jess walked into AJ Hudson’s, her favorite neighborhood pub, just after ten on the evening of Thanksgiving. She took her usual seat at the bar, hoping a pour of bourbon would cheer her up.

  “Hey, stranger,” Geoff, the owner, called. “Angel’s Envy?”

  Jess smiled at him affectionately. “Make it a double.”

  He slid the glass of amber liquid toward her. “Nice to see you back. We miss you around here, Jessie.”

  “I miss you guys too,” she said. As Geoff joked with some regulars at the other end of the bar, Jess tried to pinpoint the source of her melancholy. Thanksgiving dinner with her family had been...fine. The wives of her three older brothers had taken care of almost all of the cooking. Her dad and brothers seemed satisfied with her explanation that she’d taken on some lucrative freelance IT consulting work which required a fair amount of travel. Even though it took away her appetite to blatantly lie to them, she’d calmly explained that she wanted to try out a few different industries before committing to another full-time position. Luckily, she had six nieces and nephews under eight years old, and their antics distracted everyone from follow-up questions.

  Maybe she felt sad because Andrew’s flight from Orlando had been canceled due to weather. Drew was four years younger and had always been her closest sibling. Closest friend, really. He’d been the only one in her family to stand by her last year when she’d been wrongfully fired and publicly humiliated.

  Hmmm. Maybe that was it. Maybe she was holding a grudge. When she’d been exonerated, her dad and older brothers never apologized for not believing her side of the story. They just moved on. So, I just need to move on too. But it was hard.

  She glanced up at the ancient clock that hung over the bar, wondering how Adam’s evening had gone. She’d barely seen him since they arrived at O’Hare late Sunday night. They talked briefly each day, but all Adam had said about his plan to derail Tony was that “it was not going well.” Jess wondered if Adam and Tony had done a traditional Thanksgiving dinner. If so, it must have been Tony or a grocery store who prepared the meal, because cooking was not one of Adam’s many talents. If they’d been together for the dinner, she definitely would have attempted a turkey. And whipped up her special Parmesan mashed potatoes.

  Maybe this was the crux of her mood tonight—it just felt kind of wrong to spend a major holiday apart. At the dinner table earlier in the evening, Jess’s entire family said grace and then, as was their tradition, went around the table to say something they were grateful for that year. Jess had mumbled something about new friends and new opportunities, but inside her heart shouted: “I’m thankful for Adam.”

  Which, she now realized after a third sip of bourbon, had started her on this pouty path. If she thought about the time she’d spent with Adam so far, they’d existed in a sort of vacuum: love, sex and thievery on the run. Kind of like a dream. But tonight had reminded her that real life included family—hers and his. She might enjoy her new role as a jet-setting professional thief, but at heart she was also a Midwestern family kind of girl. Frowning, she wondered if it was actually possible to be both.

  What would Adam think about all this mooning? They hadn’t really talked about “the future” yet. Which was probably the main reason she hadn’t invited him to her family’s Thanksgiving celebration. Spending family holidays together implied a level of seriousness they hadn’t discussed. What if Adam wanted to keep their relationship in that vacuum? She didn’t doubt his love, but what if they wanted really different things in the long term?

  * * *

  Adam strode down the street to AJ’s. Jess wasn’t in her apartment, but he wasn’t worried. His lovely night owl harbored a fondness for AJ’s and its gruff owner. The second time he’d met her, she’d been eating the bar’s fried pickles and banging away at her laptop in the middle of the night.

  He couldn’t wait to see her. This week had stretched on and on, and all he wanted to do was vent to her about Tony’s stubbornness and idiocy. Through the window to the bar, he saw her perched on a stool. She was wearing a red sweater, her dark hair in a French braid that hung past her shoulder blades. He quickened his pace. After the venting, he’d have to confess what he wanted to do with the whole Tony situation. She probably wouldn’t like that part. Before he got to all that serious talking though, he was going to pull her to him, kiss her, make her laugh, and—

  Jess looked sad.

  His heart jumped into his throat. He hadn’t seen Jess sad since the very beginning of their relationship, when she was still raw after being betrayed by so many people in her life. And even then, she didn’t cry or wallow. She’d simply found a way to get through it. Shit. He’d started to take her even-keel, always-steady personality totally for granted. What could be wrong? Her dad’s health? One of her brothers acted like an asshole? Just that slight frown on her beautiful face made him angry. Angry and scared to death.

  “What’s wrong?” he said without preamble, dropping onto the stool next to her.

  In an instant, her face lit up with a smile. “Hi! I was just thinking about you!”

  Oh great. Something about him had put that contemplative sorrow on her face. Not good. Not good at all. “You looked a little sad when I walked in,” he said, gently. “Is everything OK?”

  She shrugged. “Yeah...yeah. Um, Drew wasn’t able to make it. His flight got canceled. I’m bummed about missing him.”

  A partial truth, he decided. He knew that Andrew was one of her favorite people and she hadn’t seen him in ages, but he didn’t think that was all.

  She took a tiny sip of her drink and cocked an eyebrow in his direction. “I didn’t know I’d see you tonight.”

  Adam pulled her barstool closer to his, so he could easily wrap his arm around her. “I couldn’t stay away,” he said honestly.

  After declaring a temporary truce for the holiday, he and Tony had ordered Giordano’s deep-dish pizza for dinner—their old Thanksgiving routine from when he was a teenager. But he’d spent more than a few minutes thinking about what it might be like to have a more typical holiday. He knew Jess’s family was old school; they celebrated all the big holidays with all the conventional fixings. At first he’d been relieved when she didn’t invite him over. Running the gauntlet of a conservative father and four brothers wasn’t something to be taken lightly.

  But as the long afternoon hours passed, he found himself wishing he’d had the chance to run that gauntlet. Not that he had room to complain. He certainly hadn’t mentioned spending the holiday together with either family. He’d pictured Jess in Tony’s small apartment though, wondered how it would feel for the three of them to gather around a table of traditional eats.

  Maybe he should have invited her to come by for a bit. Just to have a glass of wine with them before going to meet her family. Tony was dying to meet her. “I’ve gotta see the chickie who’s settled you down,” he’d cackled.

  Jess probably realized by now that he’d been delaying the meeting between her and his uncle. Not that he was embarrassed of Tony. OK, fine, he was a little embarrassed of Tony: his prison pallor, his love of stories from his glory days, the fact that he swore like a sailor and told crass jokes.

  But Jess was the best thing that ever happened to him. He still couldn’t believe his luck. This brilliant woman had fallen in love with him and completely changed her life in order to be with him. If he
was being honest, he still lived in fear that she might wake up one morning and think “what in the world have I done?” Hell, he practically expected that little revelation to come any day now. He certainly didn’t want Tony’s vulgarity to speed it up.

  And yet...

  Feeling like an awkward teenager, he cleared his throat. “I should have invited you over to spend part of the holiday with us. It didn’t feel right to spend today without you.”

  Jess looked at him for a long moment before a slow smile bloomed over her entire face, turning her cheeks pink and her eyes shiny. “I had the exact same thought.”

  The awkwardness disappeared. “Oh yeah?” He tugged her to him for a soft, lingering kiss.

  The kiss was just morphing from sweetness into something hotter when a whiskey glass appeared on the bar in front of Adam with an unnecessarily loud thunk. Jess broke away, giggling at Geoff’s retreating back.

  Adam rolled his eyes. On their intermittent visits to the bar over the past several months, Geoff had made it quite clear that he considered Jess a surrogate daughter. “When is he going to stop hating me?”

  Jess just laughed. “He brought you a drink without being asked. I’d call that progress.” She turned to face him full on. “Tell me how it’s going with Tony.”

  He turned his own stool so that their knees touched. “Awful.” Tony would not be dissuaded. “It’s like he’s become immune to common sense,” he huffed. It was maddening. “Even worse,” he exclaimed, warming to his topic, “he’s roped in two of his old crew, and they were never the brightest guys.”

  Jess looked thoughtful. “What started him on this kick?” she asked. “What got him thinking about that old obsession?”

  Adam sighed. It was an excellent question. One of the first he’d asked Tony, himself. “He thinks he’s identified the Bulgarian Blue’s owner. When it was sold at auction ten years ago, it was purchased anonymously and we never found out who bought it.” Fucking Internet and all the celebrity gossip. “Two weeks ago, a very young British actress wore it to some premiere. Tony saw the red carpet photos and turned into an insane person overnight.”

  “A very young British actress?” Jess repeated. “How young? How could she have been old enough to afford the jewel all those years ago?”

  “You’re right.” Adam grimaced. “Ten years ago, she was eight. Tony’s convinced that it’s her father, Lewis Webb, who owns the Blue.”

  Jess blinked. “Are you talking about Sir Lewis Webb?” Her voice rose and her pitch turned high. “The famous actor and director? Oh my God!”

  Adam shook a finger at her. “Don’t get impressed. From all reports, he’s a total dick. Also, I’ve told you before, celebrity thefts are stupid. They get an exponential amount of press coverage and pictures of whatever’s been stolen are plastered around the world. It makes fencing the piece a nightmare.”

  Brow furrowed, Jess asked the exact correct next question. “What does Tony want to do with the ring once he has it?”

  Adam threw up his hands. “He has no idea! He lost touch with all his fences long ago and none of those guys would have a clue what to do with something like the Blue. None of my fences would touch it with a ten foot pole.” He ran both hands through his hair. “Tony just laughs and shrugs when I bring it up. Says he won’t need to do anything with it for a while. He’ll ‘hold on to it until an opportunity presents itself.’”

  He slumped on the bar. “Nothing I’ve said to him has made a dent. He’s working on new IDs and London accommodations.” He met her concerned dark eyes. “He doesn’t even have a real plan, Jess. He just wants to get to London, do some recon and ‘figure it out from there.’” Frustration bubbled in Adam’s stomach. Figuring something out on the fly was a good way to go back to prison. “He figures Webb will be really distracted in the next month and he’ll be able to find a weakness to exploit somewhere.”

  Jess pulled out her phone and typed “Lewis Webb” in her browser’s search engine. “Why does he think Webb will be so distracted?”

  Adam looked at her phone’s list of search results and pointed to one that started “For one night only...” “Because of that. Webb is directing a one-night theatrical performance for charity. Personally, I think the charity angle is mostly bullshit. I think it’s a PR move for a film he has coming out in February.”

  Jess scanned the article, already distracted. “They’re doing a West End reboot of Dial M for Murder?”

  “Yeah.” Adam nodded. “It’s getting a ton of press coverage because they’ve got celebrities playing the key roles, but they’re holding open auditions for all of the minor roles and understudy parts. The whole thing will be on a tight timeframe. The auditions are on December 10th and the night of the performance is New Year’s Eve.”

  Jess kept scrolling. “It says here that Webb was hoping a reality TV show might cover the whole thing, from auditions to rehearsals to the final performance.”

  He snorted. “I saw that too. Thank God no network has bitten yet. Can you imagine? The only thing worse than this setup as it stands would be having cameras everywhere.”

  When Jess’s gaze flew from the phone to his face, he realized she’d guessed what else he needed to tell her. “Did Tony ask you to work with him on this?”

  “No.”

  It was true. Tony hadn’t asked. But Adam just couldn’t let him carry on with the bizarre no-plan, no-fear approach. As crazy as the man could make him, Adam would love and be loyal to Tony until his last breath. His uncle had stepped in to rescue him, a small boy he’d never met, from the foster care system after Adam’s mother and father died in an accident. Even if his parenting methods had been non-conventional, Adam had been loved and cared for his entire life. And even though Jess insisted it wasn’t his fault, Adam still felt partly responsible for the bad job that sent Tony to prison for all those years.

  He could never say no if Tony asked for help. Even on this lunacy. Which was maybe why Tony hadn’t asked.

  “But you’re going to work with him.” Jess’s tone was even, her inimitable poker face in full effect.

  “Yes.” He took a deep breath, and waited for her anger, her unassailable logic.

  But after a long moment, all she did was toss back the remaining bourbon in her glass. “When do we leave for London?”

  Ah shit. He should have known. “Jess. No. The risks here are unimaginable. I’d never contemplate something like this normally. I sure as fuck wouldn’t ask you to join in.”

  She gave him a calm smile that was equivalent to a condescending pat on the head. “I thought we were past this. You go, I go. All that jazz.”

  He opened his mouth to argue, but she pressed a finger against his lips. “Besides, you’ve told me too much already. I know where to find you. If you don’t include me, I’ll come anyway. I could insert myself in the exact wrong spot and mess everything up.” She leaned forward and replaced her fingers with a kiss, ending with a quick bite on his bottom lip. “I think it’s best to take advantage of my big brain and let me help.”

  Adam swore so loudly that Geoff looked over.

  God damn it. This was NOT how the night was supposed to go. It was supposed to go like this: he’d confess that he was going to London to help Tony. Jess would get mad. They’d end up in bed together either having angry sex or make-up sex. Then he’d kiss her goodbye and hop on a flight. He’d hate every minute of being apart from her, but at least he wouldn’t worry that he was endangering her entire future. If he managed to keep himself and Tony out of prison, it would be a minor miracle. Adding someone as inexperienced as Jess to the mix—even though she was incredibly talented—put another wildcard in a hand that really didn’t need one.

  He was ready to dig in to the argument, when the gleam disappeared from her eye and she got strangely serious. “I think we’re coming to a crossroads, Adam.”
<
br />   Her voice lowered to a whisper. “I’ve loved the time we’ve spent together, but we can’t exist solely in the present. We can’t just be together when things are perfectly aligned. We need to be knee-deep in each other’s messiness.” She leaned back and he watched her swallow. “I want to know your family and I want you to know mine.” She paused. “I want to be able to talk about the future and not just in terms of heists.”

  Adam’s hands went cold. What did that even mean? Of course he didn’t want them to only exist in the present.

  She slid off her stool. What she said next twisted something in his chest. “I want us to be real.”

  “I want that too.” The words popped out so softly it didn’t even sound like his voice. “Fuck, Jess. We are real.”

  She smiled and lowered her face so they were eye to eye, noses almost touching. “Good. Then let’s go pack.”

  Chapter Three

  Adam took Jess’s arm and led her through the lobby of the famed London art deco hotel The Savoy. Jess was wide-eyed with delight; no need for her poker face tonight. “Did you know that one of the last scenes of Notting Hill took place here?” She whispered. “The one where Hugh Grant calls himself ‘a daft prick’ during Julia Roberts’s press conference?”

  Adam laughed. Jess’s imitation of a British accent was truly awful. He led her up the stairs to The American Bar, one of the most famous places in the city to get a cocktail. Hopefully she’d enjoy having a drink at the glamorous hotel. They’d been in town for three days and had spent most of their time in a whirlwind of tourist activities.

  Aside from a quick backpacking trip when she was just out of college, Jess had never spent real time in the city before, and Adam was more than happy to play guide. They’d gone to see Churchill’s war rooms, the Tower of London and the Natural History Museum. On the pretense of preparing for the job, Jess had coaxed him into two of the West End’s longest-running shows. He’d treated her to dinner at a Gordon Ramsey restaurant the night before and tried not to laugh when she repeatedly peeked at the kitchen entrance as if the famously angry blond chef might come storming out at any moment. If it hadn’t been for the specter of Tony’s disastrous job hanging over everything, Adam would have rated it in the top trips of his life. It wasn’t the glamour or the sights or the fancy restaurants...it was Jess. Frankly, his favorite moments of the days were going to sleep next to her at night and waking up to her sleepy smile in the morning.