by Julie Leto
Daniel snorted. “No one cares about scandals anymore, sweetheart. With the publicity, your father can probably double the per-square-foot price of his properties.”
“Do you know how hard it is, still, for someone with the last name Albertini in a city like Chicago? Italian last name? Whispered ties to the old mob? It never really stops, no matter how many charities you fund or legitimate businesses you own and operate without so much as a fine from the IRS. And how do you think my father will feel, personally, when a nude portrait of his mother is all over the papers?”
“As I recall, she was a gorgeous woman.”
Abby growled. “That’s not the point. The painting is proof of an affair my grandmother had with the artist—an affair that has been a family secret for a long time. But people gossiped like crazy and my grandmother’s greatest regret was how those whispers hurt my father, who was just a little kid. I can’t let my mistakes drag out all that old pain again. Besides, once art experts start digging into the painting’s authenticity and history, someone is going to connect the dots about us, too. Ever consider what that kind of publicity will do to your business?”
His eyebrows shot up, but only for a second. “You had an affair with some jerk named David Brandon. No one will connect him to me.”
“Oh, really? I did.”
“I told you who I was.”
“And the police in California made note of that same alias when you were arrested for attempted murder. It won’t take long for a good reporter to make the connections. And I expect it will be hard to sneak into people’s homes or famous museums when your face is splashed all over the latest news feeds. You have as much on the line as I do.”
She turned back to the street, hoping to spot her limousine from the line outside the casino entrance. Maybe this was a mistake. Five years felt like five seconds with Daniel standing so near. The emotions he provoked, from lust to anger to passion to betrayal, rushed at her from every direction.
The deeper she tried to dig herself out of this mess, the worse it got. She’d managed to keep the details of her relationship with Daniel secret from everyone, even her parents. They knew that she’d been duped by a con man, but she’d never told them that she’d slept with him or that she’d practically handed over the safe’s combination when he’d coaxed the story of her grandmother’s rebellious affair with the artist, Bastien Pierre-Louis, out of her.
The only person who knew the whole truth had been Marshall. To him, she’d confessed everything. Not the sordid details—she’d spared him that pain—but she’d been brutally honest about her weaknesses and how Daniel had played to every single one.
And yet, for reasons she’d never completely understand, he’d forgiven her. They’d had to work hard to rebuild their relationship, but in the end, they’d been happy. If her past sins came to light, Marshall’s memory would be tarnished, too. She couldn’t allow that to happen.
She cursed, unable to spot her driver. The delay gave Daniel a chance to walk around in front of her. Though he’d slipped his hands casually into his pockets, his tight jaw and focused stare were anything but relaxed.
“I’m the last person you should ask for help.”
“No, you’re the only person I can ask. You already know the painting’s history and you owe me. It was hard to track you down, but no harder than asking you for help.”
“Do you think staying away from you has been easy? For five years, I’ve pretended you didn’t exist. I let you have your perfect marriage with your perfect man. Now you show up here acting like a sex goddess on the prowl, make me an offer I can’t refuse, but then freak out after one innocent touch? I’m a thief, Abby. Not a monster. I hurt you once. I won’t do it again.”
She swallowed deeply, then straightened her spine, determined to regain her control. He sounded so sincere, but she knew better than to fall for his line, no matter how artfully he delivered it. Daniel Burnett couldn’t be trusted with her emotions. She wasn’t even sure she could trust herself with them.
“I have no reason to believe you,” she said. “But if you agree to help me, I have no choice but to take you at your less-than-reliable word.”
“So we’re both backed into a corner.”
He stretched out his right hand, but stopped just a millimeter shy of touching her cheek. In the span of a heartbeat, his attention shifted from her to the ring on his right hand, the one he’d been trying desperately to get off when she’d first seen him in the bar.
She grabbed the opportunity to change the subject.
“What is that?”
“Recently inherited family treasure.”
He turned his hand so she could see the stone. As jewelry went, it was fairly pathetic. The black opals on the sides were brilliant with bright blues and greens, but the center stone, which caught the marquee lights with more brilliance than she expected, had a huge, zigzagged scratch.
“Maybe you can barter with the collector who has my painting,” she suggested. The two items were nowhere near equal value, but she couldn’t ignore the irony that he now possessed a family treasure when he’d been responsible for stealing hers.
“If I could get the damned thing off my finger. But it’s supposed to bring luck, so to speak, to the men in my family. Could come in handy while I’m breaking my rule of never stealing the same piece of art twice.”
Her heart skipped a beat. “You’re going to help me?”
“Yes, and not because of the threat to my livelihood. You may not believe me, but I’m helping you because it’s the right thing to do.”
His voice inflected with his obvious disbelief, but before she could question his sincerity, he gestured gallantly toward the line of limousines and gave her a little bow, as if inviting her to lead the way.
Her shoes were rooted to the sidewalk.
“Without any expectations?”
He looked up at the dark night sky as if asking for divine intervention. “Really, woman, when you have the advantage, take it and run.”
Abby opened her mouth to object, but then decided to quit while she was ahead. The hard part of this operation, apparently, was not getting Daniel on board—but keeping him from running roughshod over her.
She had to stay focused. Eyes on the prize.
And hands off the merchandise.
She finally spotted her limo. With a nod to the driver, she slid into the backseat, adjusting her skirt as the car dipped slightly while Daniel climbed in beside her. Despite the roominess of the interior, he sat as close to her as he could.
The driver slammed the door.
“There’s space in this car for eight people,” she said. “Feel free to spread out.”
He made that clicking sound with his tongue. “Thanks, but I’m fine here.”
She’d had no illusions that he’d make this easy, but she was up to the challenge. She had to be.
She gave the driver instructions to take them straight to the airport, and then didn’t object when Daniel closed the glass partition.
“Should we stop anywhere to retrieve your things?” she asked.
“You can buy me whatever I need.”
“What you need most can’t be bought,” she quipped.
He chuckled. “Clever. So you’ve developed a sharp tongue since last we met?”
“I’ve developed a lot of things. I was a child when last we met.”
He turned so that his body, so close, faced hers. “You were a lot of things, Abigail Alexandra Albertini, but a child you were not.”
She didn’t remember ever telling him her alliterative middle name, but his casual use of it reminded her how much more he knew about her than she did about him.
To find Daniel Burnett, she’d had to employ several private investigators. Each one had provided tidbits of his past, disjointed and disconnected, until she’d pieced them together into an incomplete picture of his life.
His mother had turned him over to family services when he was five years old. She’d died
of a drug overdose about a year later. He’d been shuttled from foster home to foster home until he was ten, when he’d landed with the Burnett family, who’d adopted him. His juvenile record included multiple counts for petty theft and trespassing, but by the time he turned eighteen, his name disappeared from arrest records. He’d been interviewed about a few cases in his early twenties and the name Daniel Burnett had dominated watch lists for museums, collectors and auction houses worldwide since, but he had never been prosecuted, not even after a security guard was seriously injured at the site of his last job.
When she combined what she’d learned from her private investigators with what she knew from their affair, the idea that he’d nearly killed someone struck her as unlikely. Even after he’d betrayed her trust in the worst possible way, Daniel was a lover, not a fighter. She couldn’t believe he’d try to kill someone.
“What happened in California?” she asked.
“I grew up in California,” he answered. “Many things happened there.”
“I mean your arrest.”
“Rethinking your decision to tap me for the honor of retrieving your stolen property?” he asked, his eyes glittering with his tease—one likely meant to divert her line of questioning.
“No,” she said. “It’s just that part of your appeal as a thief is that up until a couple of months ago, you’d never seen the inside of a jail cell for more than a few hours. And you definitely never hurt anyone.”
“You’ve checked up on me?”
“Of course,” she replied.
“Smart girl,” he admitted. “You probably won’t believe this, but I was set up for that mess in California.”
“By whom?”
He leaned back into the seat and eyed her again, this time warily. Had he not expected her to take him at his word?
“Might have been you, now that I think about it. You couldn’t see me jailed for what I did to you, so maybe you arranged for me to be railroaded for something else.”
She shook her head. “There’s a huge flaw in that logic.”
“Really?”
“Oh, yes. If I was going to frame you for a crime, I’d do it in Illinois, not California. We don’t have the death penalty, so you’d have to suffer longer.”
He snickered at her joke and she was surprised she’d made it. She was supposed to be angry at him, or at least wary of him. But in the span of twenty minutes, she’d already started meeting his teases with her own.
“Do you think the person who set you up is still out to get you?” she asked, returning the conversation to her most serious concern.
“Nah,” he said. “But it’s sweet that you’re worried about me.”
This time, her laugh was a burst of genuine humor. “I’m not worried about you. I’m worried about someone getting in the way of you retrieving my painting. The collector has already sent out invitations to art lovers all around Chicago, promising to reveal an unknown work by Bastien Pierre-Louis next week. The buzz in local circles is getting louder every day. This operation needs to be quick and simple. No complications.”
Daniel laughed, retrieved two glasses from the limousine’s bar and then commandeered the champagne she’d taken from the casino and poured. “Then you’re out of luck, sweetheart. If you don’t want complications, you picked the wrong man.”
4
FROM A SEAT IN the back of Abigail’s private jet, Danny watched her move up the aisle and marveled at how much she’d changed—and how much she had stayed the same. She was still beautiful and slim, still graceful and minimal in her movements, still sweet and charming as she spoke in hushed tones to her pilot and copilot, who nodded and smiled with deferential respect when she was facing them, but checked out her ass when she left the cockpit.
Shifting in his seat, Danny made eye contact. Their hungry grins vanished. The captain tipped his hat and then quickly shut the door.
Danny had no right to feel territorial. He had no business thinking about how smooth Abby’s skin had been underneath his touch for that brief moment, or how her aversion to contact now reminded him of how skittish she’d been five years ago, how hard he’d had to work to get past her considerable defenses. Even after he’d tempted her into his bed, she would have rather bitten through her lip than make too much noise. Her idea of down-and-dirty sex was doing it standing up.
He had a hard time reconciling that shy, repressed young woman with the vixen now sashaying up the aisle as if she meant to torture him with what he could not have.
And on this, she was succeeding.
She slid into the leather seat across from his, her skirt riding up an extra inch or two that the dress simply didn’t have to give.
“Want anything before we take off?” she asked.
Oh, he wanted a lot of things—none of which he was going to get anytime soon.
Still, he made a show of glancing around the cabin. “No flight attendants?”
“Just the pilot and copilot.” She clicked her seat belt and waited for Danny to do the same. “We have a lot to talk about. I didn’t want to be disturbed.”
He stretched out his legs so that they were inches from hers. “Sure that’s the only reason you wanted to be alone? To talk?”
She ignored his question. “Who hired you to steal the painting five years ago?”
“Why?”
“Anatomy of a crime,” she explained. “By the time we arrive in Chicago, I want to know everything you do about what happened to my painting.”
“I thought you knew who had it.”
“I do. Or at least, I think I do,” she clarified. “His name is Harris Liebe.”
Danny shrugged. He’d never heard the name before—and this was odd. The fraternity of art collectors who purchased off the black market wasn’t that extensive.
“Never heard of him.”
“Neither have a lot of people. But his little announcement has piqued the interest of the legitimate art world. Bastien Pierre-Louis’s work has been experiencing a resurgence in the last decade. Every year leading up to what would have been the man’s one-hundredth birthday increases the value of his pieces, particularly the unsigned ones he gave away during his lifetime.”
“Like your grandmother’s.”
“Precisely like hers. She was the daughter of a wealthy New York businessman with supposed ties to the mob. My great-grandfather, her father-in-law, had similar connections in Chicago, though his son was legitimate. The whole twisted tale makes the painting worth more than even I could afford.”
“And that’s why your family never insured it?”
“I wanted to. Because I curate for so many private collectors, I have contacts with people who would have been very discreet. But my father wanted no connection to it and asked me not to do anything that would officially connect the painting to our family. And after you took it,” she said, the words shooting out of her mouth like bullets from a twenty-two, “my father asked me not to call the police. He hated that painting. I think he was glad someone took it.”
Now, this was a piece of information Danny would file away for later. He’d never met Abby’s parents, but assumed they’d hate him on sight. If he were a father, he certainly would. But maybe there was a chance, even if it was a long shot, that he’d find a way into the real estate titan’s good graces. Everything about this situation was doomed for failure, but he’d survived most of his life because of his inability to take no for an answer.
“How does your father feel now that the painting is going to be publicly displayed?”
She looked askance. “He doesn’t exactly know.”
“How’d you pull that off?”
“I arranged for my mother to have a sudden need to spend alone time with him in their Italian villa. They’ll be gone for two more weeks.”
Danny leaned back in his seat. “Impressive.”
“I’ve learned to cover all my bases, which is why I need to know everything you know about the collector who paid you to seduce me.”
Danny shook his head. He’d deflect blame for a lot of his misdeeds, but not that one. “That part was entirely my idea. I mean, look at you. Can you blame a guy?”
Her sneer wasn’t nearly as biting as she intended. “Tell me what you know about the first collector.”
He gave up trying to postpone this part of the conversation. He wasn’t used to discussing his business practices with anyone, much less someone he’d used them against.
“The story isn’t that exciting. A collector contacted me, told me about the painting and offered me a shitload of money to steal it.”
“And how does one go about contacting you?”
“Word of mouth.”
“Whose word? Whose mouth?”
That secret he wasn’t sharing. “An associate who takes care of moving my merchandise to the collectors who’ve requested it.”
“So this person is a fence?”
He arched a brow. Abby was nothing if not thorough.
“She’s also a legitimate art appraiser,” he explained, “so she runs in a lot of circles, maybe even some of yours. The collector got word to her that he was interested in hiring me for a job. I met with his representative, who paid my retainer after we negotiated a timetable and a total price. The deal was sealed with a handshake.”
She chuckled humorlessly. “Sounds so clean and professional.”
“It is what it is,” he shot back.
Danny had never defended his lifestyle to anyone before. He’d never needed to. Approval or disapproval of how he made his living had never mattered to him. And even though Abby was now hiring him for the very reasons she sneered at, he knew she’d never approve. How could she, after what he’d done?
“Does your husband know you tracked me down?” he asked, wondering why a smart guy like Marshall Chamberlain would allow his wife to seek him out, particularly while wearing that little black dream of a dress.
He watched her cheek hollow as she sucked on the inner flesh.
