by Julie Leto
She groaned. “Now you’re really scaring me.”
Danny laughed. “That makes two of us.”
8
“YOU CLEAN UP NICE.”
Abby curled her legs under her on the couch. Black Jack, who’d been lounging on her lap, hopped down, gave Danny a disapproving mewl, then scampered to his favorite hiding place behind her decorative Chinese screen. Lady, who’d shot toward Danny the minute he’d emerged from the guest room, marched around in a confused circle, then disappeared with her buddy.
The cats were either really smart, or seriously missing out.
“Your friend has good taste,” Danny said, spreading out his arms to indicate his clothes.
Abby couldn’t argue. Though she’d texted Erica sizes and had made suggestions about what to buy, her friend had chosen soft denim jeans just loose enough to give the man room to move and snug enough in the seat and thighs that she had to swallow a sigh of appreciation. The gray sweater, worn over a black T-shirt, looked exceedingly lush, and the dark colors did amazing things to his swarthy skin and emerald-green eyes.
It was no wonder she’d fallen for the guy. From her first visit to the Art Institute when she was only four, she’d developed an insatiable appreciation for beauty, form and style. Danny had all of the above. His rugged jawline and athletic build counterbalanced the innate grace with which he moved. He was contradictions and perfection, all rolled up into one irresistible, macho male package.
“She’s not the only one,” she muttered.
“Excuse me?”
“Good taste,” she said. “You’re a stunningly good-looking man.”
He hesitated as he reached across the table to the carafe of coffee and assessed her with his penetrating eyes. “Are you trying to butter me up for something?”
She shook her head and pushed beyond the eruption of butterflies in her stomach.
“I think it’s time for me to be honest with you. Completely and totally honest.”
“That sounds dangerous.”
“I thought you loved danger.”
“No, I love a challenge. There’s a subtle, but very important difference.”
“Didn’t you just help your brother bring down a serial rapist? That couldn’t have been a walk in the park.”
“Compared with being honest about my emotions, it was child’s play.”
“Yeah,” she agreed. “You’re probably right, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t give it a go. To get my grandmother’s painting back, we’re going to have to do some serious lying to a lot of people. But we might as well tell each other the truth first. Clear the air.”
He poured his coffee, then took his time sprinkling in a half teaspoon of sugar and stirring. “The truth is a fluid thing, Abby. Your truth may not be the same as mine.”
“I’m not talking about the past. We both know what happened and why. I’m talking about now. Five years ago, we never even had a conversation during daylight hours unless we were on the phone. We never once slept in the same bed all night long. One of us always left before the sun rose.”
“Then today wasn’t any different,” he said.
She sipped her coffee, which had grown as lukewarm as her enthusiasm for honesty and confessions. But she had to do this. She only had Danny in her life as long as it took to steal back her painting. If she wanted to come to terms with his influence on her life, she had to pull out all the stops—and stop all the lies, even the little white ones.
“Actually, I stayed until the sun came up, though I was in the chair across from you.”
“The chair? I thought you said I didn’t try anything.”
“You didn’t,” she confessed, the heat of a blush blooming on her cheeks. “But when I heard you muttering my name in your sleep, I almost tried something. I even kissed you.”
He set his coffee down and leaned on his elbows, his expression inscrutable.
“That wasn’t part of my dream?”
She shook her head.
Moments after Erica left, Abby had made the decision to lay her cards on the table. Her friend had asked if nice guys were overrated and Abby had said yes. Marshall had been an exception to the rule, but that wasn’t the point. Nice guys were as overrated as bad boys. The labels on either side of the spectrum were limiting and oversimplified the human condition. Yes, she believed saints and sinners existed, but not in great numbers. The majority of human beings were somewhere in the middle.
Like Danny.
Yes, he skewed toward bad boy. He made a living on thievery and lies. Even when he’d claimed to love her, he’d still gone through with the unforgivable act of stealing her grandmother’s painting and then had the audacity to beg her to run away with him on the eve of her wedding to a man whose capacity for forgiveness could not be measured.
And yet, Danny wasn’t so entirely corrupt that he hadn’t kept his promise to leave her alone. He hadn’t checked up on her or otherwise interfered with her life—and the minute she’d asked him to come back and help her retrieve her painting, he’d said yes. And despite the chemistry sizzling between them, despite the way she’d infiltrated his dreams, he’d kept his hands to himself last night.
She was the one who’d breached the barrier.
And it had been nice.
Very, very nice.
Danny put down his coffee and joined her on the couch, his mouth set in an emotionless line and his eyes narrowed with suspicion. With his hand braced behind her, he slid into her personal space. Instantly, his scent ensnared her. Warm and male and potent, wrapped up in the herbal scents of her favorite soap and shampoo.
“You kissed me while I was sleeping?”
“I did,” she confessed.
“And how was it?”
She shook her head. “Too brief to tell.”
“We can fix that,” he said, leaning even closer so that he ratcheted up her body heat.
Her eyes drifted closed. Her lips softly parted in keen anticipation. Her heartbeat accelerated, awakening her entire body with need. But even as his breath mingled with hers, he stopped his forward momentum, his lips a millimeter from hers.
“Open your eyes,” he commanded.
Her lids fluttered open, but she couldn’t see much beyond the intense green of his gaze.
“What are you waiting for?” she asked.
He brushed his lips briefly across her chin.
“No point in doing this in the daylight if you’re not going to watch.”
As much as she wanted to fall into a state of blind delirium, she accepted his gauntlet. Her eyes locked with his, and she was only vaguely aware of him curling her hair behind her ear, then trailing his feathery touch down the side of her neck. She was fascinated by the slow slide of his tongue over his lips before he dipped his head and nibbled a ticklish path from her lobe down her chin, which he then tilted so that her face was at just the right angle.
But he still didn’t kiss her. Not really. He flicked his tongue across the seam of her lips, applying a quick layer of moisture to her mouth, giving her a brief taste of what was to come. When he broke eye contact, it was only to gaze hungrily at her lips. He was savoring the moment—drawing it out, torturing her so that she had no choice but to grab the sides of his face and finish the job in one mad rush.
The conflagration was instantaneous. Every moment she’d spent alone over the past year collided with the potent memories of their affair, combining into an explosion of sensations that were familiar and exciting and intoxicating and hot. Their tongues danced, explored, pleasured. Her bones dissolved. Her muscles and skin liquefied until she was a pool of nerve endings across the cushions of her couch. Though she’d dragged him down with her, he leveraged his body so that he didn’t press against her.
“Whoa,” he said.
“What?” she asked, confused. “Why?”
“Just a kiss, Abby.”
She shook her head, trying to clear her brain of hormonal overload long enough to comprehend what had happ
ened. A kiss had been all she wanted, so what had gone wrong?
“We’ve never shared just a kiss.”
“Maybe it’s time we try,” he suggested.
She swallowed deeply, realizing this was going to be a lot harder than she thought. Not just the single kiss, but all of it. Sharing space with Danny. Sharing her home. Sharing her soul enough for him to understand why she’d do anything to save her family from the humiliation of the past, both hers and her grandmother’s—but not enough that he’d think they could have something together once this operation was complete.
She opened her mouth to make the perimeters clear, but he lowered his head again and took advantage of her hesitation. In slow, torturous increments, he relaxed his arms so that his body covered hers with the sensation of a silk sheet and the weight of a hot-bodied man. Despite the hard pressure of his sex against her hip, her awareness was caught up in the way his tongue slid across hers, swirling in sweet, sensuous circles. His lips pressed against hers with just enough suction to steal the steady cadence of her breathing.
The kiss lasted for an hour, or maybe a minute or two. No matter the passage of time, when he pulled away, she couldn’t speak.
“I kiss better when I’m awake, don’t you think?”
She hummed her agreement, still too dizzy to speak.
When he eased off her, she swallowed the whimper of disappointment. Her entire body vibrated, as if she’d just worked out at the gym after months of bed rest.
Since Marshall’s death, she’d put herself in confinement, first out of genuine grief, but lately, more out of her fears about what people would think if she smiled too much, went out too often, involved herself in any kind of social activity beyond quiet dinners with her friends or charity events hosted by her family. But lately, she’d felt restless and confined—the same two emotions that had weakened her to Danny’s charms five years ago.
Now, however, she was going in with her eyes wide-open. He hadn’t come to steal from her this time—at least, not without her being fully aware of what he might try to take.
“So, let’s talk about this painting,” he suggested.
She had to blink a couple of times to clear her head, then accepted the hand he offered to help her sit up.
“Now?” she asked.
“No time like the present. Besides, if we don’t start talking business, I’m going to get down to business, if you know what I mean.”
“And that’s a bad thing?”
His eyes flared with consternation. “We’re taking it slow this time.”
She nodded as if in agreement and then went to her desk to retrieve the file she’d collected on her painting. But when she sat beside him again, she skewered him with an indignant look.
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why are we taking it slow? I mean, you’re only going to be here for a week, tops. If we can’t get my painting back before the guy makes it public, then our plan is dead in the water and you have no reason to stay.”
He slid the file in front of him and started pawing through the documents. “I might have a reason to stay.”
“Like?”
“You.”
“Me?”
He groaned, probably because she was being purposefully dense. She knew what he meant—or at least, she thought she knew—but she couldn’t really wrap her mind around believing it.
“Do you know what happened to me when you threw me out of your bedroom the night before your wedding?” he asked.
He sounded angry, but somehow, his frustration did not seem focused on her.
“I have no idea.”
“I went to Mexico,” he said, his tone making it clear that he hated Mexico.
“I’m…sorry?” she tried, not exactly certain what she was supposed to say.
“Yeah, so was I. A sorry mess. For a whole month, I survived on tequila and tortillas. I felt like crap for what I’d done to you, Abby, but even worse than that, I felt like I’d let myself down.”
“I don’t understand.”
From what she’d found out in the week between his stealing her painting and his reappearance on the eve of her wedding to Marshall, David Brandon, aka Danny Burnett, had established himself as one of the foremost art thieves in the country. His name was listed on several government-agency watch lists, as well as Interpol. Complaints against him came from many of the same people she dealt with in the art world—gallery owners, private collectors, museum curators. Seducing her so he could get his hands on an undiscovered painting by an increasingly popular artist, Bastien Pierre-Louis, had been a strategy he must have used before. So while she could understand how he’d let her down, for him, it had been business as usual.
He shoved the file away and turned aside, cursing quietly, though it was loud enough for her to make out the word.
“I shouldn’t have gotten personally involved with you, Abby. I never had before and I never have since.”
“BUT I WASN’T THE FIRST woman you seduced in order to steal something,” she guessed.
Danny shook his head, wincing at the depths of her low opinion of him. Yes, he’d enjoyed a few brief affairs during some of his jobs. A spark of attraction had led to the gathering of important information like security procedures, secret hiding places or, as in Abby’s case, safe combination numbers. But he’d never gone out of his way to seduce the information out of a woman. He’d never immersed himself in learning everything about a woman’s past, habits, interests and vulnerabilities in order to exploit her.
But the minute he’d first seen Abby, he’d known that’s what he had to do. Not because it was the only way to get the painting, which rarely—if ever—left the family vault. He had a million different ways to infiltrate security systems that didn’t include seducing the woman with the combination. But with Abby, he hadn’t been able to resist.
Though moneyed and privileged, she possessed a kind of innocent naïveté that arrested his attention, but he knew enough about women to spot the type who were keeping their true passions under wraps. Maybe it was the way she lingered in the sections of the museum that housed the more evocative sculptures—maybe it was the way she spoke in whispers to her friends while they admired paintings that ventured near to erotic. Whatever it was, he’d needed to know more about her.
So he’d learned. And in that learning, he’d fallen in love.
Or at least, that’s what he’d called it at the time. After pining for her for six full months in Mexico, though, he hadn’t been so sure. From what he’d heard about love, it required two people to share things like trust and honesty. He’d done neither with her then—but he was ready to do it now.
He couldn’t help but glance down at the ring and wonder.
“I didn’t make it common practice to get so closely involved with my marks,” he said, shifting so that his hand was out of sight. “In fact, in my business, it usually pays to stay in the background and do reconnaissance without interacting with anyone. That way, no one remembers you well enough to describe you to the police.”
“I could have described you very vividly,” she mused, her voice deepening to throaty levels that scraped against his skin like fine-grade sandpaper.
“More vividly than you know,” he said, trying to ignore her perfume, which was suddenly invading his space with alluring hints of vanilla and spice. “You knew things about me I’d never told anyone.”
She snickered. “I didn’t know anything about you! I knew about David Brandon, but he wasn’t even real.”
He shrugged. “He wasn’t entirely made up. A good lie is one that’s based on truth.”
Her expression turned curious. “What was the truth, then? You told me that you were a military brat who traveled all over the world. Was that true?”
“I did travel a lot, but mostly because my mother was a junkie who had a thing for long-road truckers.”
“How old were you when you ended up in foster care?” she asked.
H
e arched a brow.
“I told you I’d done my own research, Danny. But I’d like to hear about it from you.”
Danny chuckled mirthlessly. He didn’t like to talk about his childhood. Few foster kids did. Living the life of an unwanted brat shuttled through a cold and broken system had hardened just about every child it touched. But Danny had, eventually, found a situation he could manipulate, if not thrive in. The Burnetts had been far from perfect, but they’d, at the very least, given him a trade and a sister in their daughter, Lucy.
“I don’t remember much about the first years. I never stayed anywhere longer than six months because I had a habit of taking things that didn’t belong to me and trading them in school or on the street for stuff I needed. Then when I was around twelve, I ended up in the Burnett household.”
“And it was different?”
“Not really, except for one thing. Lucy. She was their only biological child amid a houseful of ever-changing fosters. She and I—I don’t know—connected, I guess. We were best friends. Still are, which is convenient since she’s about to marry my brother.”
“Which brother?”
“Alejandro,” he affirmed. “After I was framed for the attack on the security guard and arrested, a hired thug named Jimmy the Rim paid me a visit in jail and offered me a trade—my continued good health for this ring. Trouble was, I didn’t know where the ring was. Ramon, my biological father, had owned it, but he was dead. Lucy…” Here, Danny decided to alter the facts. He could share his own secrets with Abby, but Lucy’s private life wasn’t his to reveal. “Well, let’s just say she went to Alejandro to find out about the ring, and in the process, they fell for each other hard.”
“And the person who wanted the ring?”
“Jimmy got pinched for attacking Alex and Lucy, but wouldn’t give up who hired him. Alex’s lawyer got the charges against me dropped and Michael kept the ring, just to make sure it was safe. Then, last night, he gave it to me.”
“And you don’t think the person who wanted the ring badly enough to set you up for attempted murder is going to try again to get it?”
