Sweet Revenge

by Nora Roberts

  sucked into.

  Adrianne looked at her mother’s illness that way, like a tunnel, dark, deep, with hundreds of blind corners and dead ends. It was better to have that tangible vision than the cold comfort of all the technical terms in the dozens of books on abnormal behavior Adrianne had pored over. Better still than all the diagnoses and prognoses she’d received in quiet leather-scented rooms from respected doctors.

  It had been the tunnel that had pulled her mother deeper as time went by. Somehow over the years, Phoebe had been able to find her way out again. Until she’d been too tired, or until the dark seemed easier than the light.

  Perhaps time did heal, but it didn’t make you forget.

  She felt better for having put her feelings into words, though she was already regretting having given Philip so much. She told herself it didn’t matter, that soon they would be going their separate ways and whatever she’d said, whatever she’d shared, would mean little as time went on. If he’d been kind where kindness hadn’t been expected, it couldn’t matter. If she’d wanted where desire could never exist, she could overcome it. She’d taken care of herself too long, guarded her emotions too carefully, to let him make a difference.

  From now on every thought, every feeling, had to be focused on Jaquir—and revenge.

  But when she opened the door between the rooms he was still there, shirtless, barefoot, talking in surprisingly fluid Spanish to a white-suited smooth-faced waiter. She watched Philip pass bills over—enough, apparently, to make the young man glad he was working, holiday or not.

  “Buenas dios, señora. Merry Christmas.”

  She didn’t bother to correct his assumption of her relationship with Philip, or the fact that Christmas hadn’t been merry for her in quite a long time. Instead, she smiled, pleasing him almost as much as the pesos already in his pocket.

  “Buenos dios. Felices Navidad.” Adrianne folded her hands and waited for the sound of the door closing. “Why are you still here?” she asked when they were alone.

  “Because I’m hungry.” He walked outside onto the terrace and sat. Obviously settled and comfortable, he poured coffee. There were ways and ways to gain trust, he thought. With a bird with a broken wing, it took patience, care, and a gentle touch. With a high-strung horse that had been whipped, it took diligence and the risk of being kicked. With a woman, it took a certain amount of charm. He was willing to combine all three.

  She came out, frowning. “I might not have wanted breakfast.”

  “Fine. I can eat yours too.”

  “Or company.”

  “You can always go down to the beach. Cream?”

  She might have resisted the smell of coffee, or the golden light of the sun. She told herself she could certainly have resisted him. But she couldn’t, wouldn’t, resist the scent of hot food.

  “Yes.” She took her seat as if granting an audience. Philip’s mouth twitched.

  “Sugar? Your Highness.”

  Her eyes narrowed, heated. A storm brewing. Then just as quickly they cleared with her smile. “I use my title only on formal occasions, or with idiots.”

  “I’m flattered.”

  “Don’t be. I’m still debating whether you’re an idiot or not.”

  “I’d like to give you the day to make up your mind.” He cut into his omelette. Spicy odors steamed out. He had an idea Adrianne was like that, smooth and elegant outside, and, once opened up, full of heat and surprises. “Since I’ve been busy watching you, I haven’t had much time to take advantage of the water or the sun.”

  “Pity!”

  “Exactly. The least you could do is take advantage of it with me.” He spread strawberry jam on a piece of toast and handed it to her. “Unless you’re afraid to spend time with me.”

  “Why should I be?”

  “Because you know I want to make love with you and you’re worried that you’d enjoy it.”

  She bit into the toast, making the effort to keep her eyes steady. “I’ve already told you, I’ve no intention of sleeping with you.”

  “Then a few hours in the sun won’t make any difference.” As if it were settled, he continued to eat. “Did you mean what you said last night?”

  The omelette was taking the edge off. As the sun baked away the last of the aches, she glanced over. “About what?”

  “About this being your last job.”

  She poked at her eggs with her fork. Rarely did she have a problem with lying, and didn’t care to discover it was difficult with him. “I said it was the last job of this phase of my career.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Just that.”

  “Adrianne.” This was a time, he thought, for patience and a firm hand. “I have an obligation to my superiors. I also have a need to help you.” He saw the wariness in her eyes, but she didn’t pull away when he laid a hand over hers. “If you’re honest with me, there might be a way I could accomplish both. If you’re not, I could be in as much trouble as you.”

  “You won’t be in trouble if you leave me to it. I can tell you it’s a private matter, Philip, and nothing to concern Interpol or you.”

  “It has to concern me.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I care for you.” He tightened his grip when her hand moved restlessly under his. “Very much.”

  She’d have preferred it if he’d used a line, one of the standard and easily ignored lines men doled out to women they were attracted to. This was too simple, too direct, and too sincere. “I’d rather you didn’t.”

  “So do I, but we’re both stuck with it.” He let her hand go, then went back, as calmly as he could, to his meal. “I’ll make it easy for you. Start by telling me why you got into second-story work.”

  “You won’t give me any peace until I do?”

  “No. More coffee?”

  She nodded. It hardly mattered now, she decided. Besides, they had this in common, they knew the same sensations, the same emotions, the same triumphs. “I told you my mother had been ill for some time.”

  “Yes.”

  “There were doctors and medicines and treatments, Often she had to be hospitalized for long periods.”

  He knew that, of course. Anyone who had read a magazine in the last decade knew the tragedy of Phoebe Spring. Still, he thought it best if he heard it in Adrianne’s words, and with her feelings. “What was wrong with her?”

  This was the hardest, she knew. If she said it quickly, it would be done. “She was diagnosed as a manic-depressive. There were times she would talk and talk and make outrageous plans. She wouldn’t be able to sit or sleep or eat because the energy, it was almost like a poison, was burning through her system. Then she’d swing down so low that she couldn’t talk at all. She’d just sit and stare. She wouldn’t know anyone, not even me.”

  She cleared her throat and deliberately took a sip of coffee. That was the most difficult memory of all—thinking back to the way it had felt to sit, holding her mother’s hand, talking to her, even pleading, and receiving only a blank stare. At those times Phoebe had been lost in the tunnel and tempted by the dark and the silence.

  “That must have been hell for you.”

  She didn’t look at him, couldn’t. Instead, she looked out to the water, calm and impossibly blue under a mirror sky. “It was hell for her. Over the years she developed a problem with alcohol and with drugs. That had begun in Jaquir—though God knows how she managed it—and had spiraled out of control when she tried to pick up the pieces in Hollywood. I don’t honestly know whether the mental illness fed the alcoholism or if the alcoholism fed the illness. I know only that she fought both for as long as she could, but when we got to California, the scripts weren’t there with the parts she’d been used to playing, and she couldn’t handle the failure. She had bad advice which she swallowed like a starving woman. Her agent was slime.”

  Her voice tightened there, stretched but didn’t waver. There was enough of a change, however subtle, to make him narrow his eyes and focus on her
s. “What did he do? To you?”

  Her head jerked up at that. For an instant her eyes were clear as glass. Just as quickly, the shutter lowered.

  “How old were you?” he asked very carefully while his fingers bit into the metal of his fork.

  “Fourteen. It wasn’t as bad as you think. Mama came in before he could—while I was fighting him. I’d never seen her like that. She was incredible, like the cliché about the tigress defending her cub.” Because it made her uncomfortable, she set the matter, and the memory, aside. “What matters is that he dragged her down, used her, exploited her, and she was too battered from those years in Jaquir to pull herself back up.”

  He let it pass, only because when you needed to win trust, you could only push so much so fast. “You didn’t stay in California?”

  “We came back to New York right after the incident with her agent. She seemed better, really better. She was talking about trying theater work again. Stage. She was thrilled, talking about all the offers she was getting. There weren’t any, or no important ones, but I didn’t know it then, because I believed, wanted to believe, everything was all right. Then one day, just after I turned sixteen, I came home from school to find her sitting in the dark. She didn’t answer me when I spoke to her. I shook her and shouted. Nothing. I can’t tell you what that was like—it was as if she were dead inside.”

  He said nothing, just linked his fingers with hers. Adrianne stared down at their joined hands. Such a simple thing, she thought, one of the most basic forms of human contact. She’d never known it could be so comforting.

  “I had to put her into a sanitarium. That was the first time. A month there, and there was no money left. But she pulled out of it for a while. I quit school and got a job. She never knew.”

  She should have been in school, leading cheers and dating skinny young boys. “Wasn’t there anyone, any family you could have gone to?”

  “Her parents were dead. She’d been raised by her grandparents, and they both died while I was a baby. There’d been a little insurance money, but that had been sent to Jaquir and it remained there.” She brushed that off as if it hardly mattered. “I didn’t mind working, in fact I enjoyed it a great deal more than school. But the little I could earn wasn’t enough for the rent and food, much less medicine and nursing care. So I began to steal. I was good at it.”

  “Didn’t she wonder where the money came from?”

  “No. Those last years she was in a dream half the time. She often thought she was still making films.” A smile began to form. She watched a gull swoop down over the sound and wheel, screaming, out to sea. “Eventually, I told Celeste; she went wild. She would have paid for everything, but I couldn’t let her. My mother was my responsibility. In any case, I never stole from anyone who didn’t deserve it.”

  “How do you figure?”

  “I’ve always been selective about my targets. I’ve always stolen from the very rich.”

  “That’s always wise,” Philip said ironically.

  “And very close-fisted. Take Lady Caroline.”

  “Yes, the diamond.” Tilting his chair back, Philip took out a cigarette. “Twenty-two carats, nearly flawless. I’ve always envied you that one.”

  “It was a fabulous job.” She braced her elbows on the table, resting her chin on her open hands. “She kept it in a vault, top-notch security. Heat sensors. Motion detectors. Infrared. It took me six months to plan it out.”

  “How did you?”

  “I was invited for the weekend. That way I didn’t have to worry about the outside security. I used magnets and a minicomputer. They had sensor beams on the first floor, but it was simple enough to crawl under them. The vault itself was a time lock, but I fooled the computer into thinking it was six hours later. I’d rigged a device out of an alarm clock and some microchips. Once inside the vault, I had to bypass two backup alarms and jam the cameras, then I was home free. Once I was snug in my room, I tripped the alarms with a remote control.”

  “You tripped the alarms while you were still in the house?”

  “What better way?” Her appetite came back, so she spread more jam on toast. “I’d pushed the diamond into my face cream, though, of course, they never searched my belongings.”

  “Of course.”

  “I was there to be awakened at four A.M. by the alarms, and to be horrified with Lady Caroline.”

  Philip watched her nip into the bread and jam. “One might call that cold.”

  “She didn’t rate my sympathy. She has forty million pounds in real assets, and gives less than one half of one percent to charity.”

  He tilted his head to study her. “Is that your gauge for a deserving mark?”

  “Yes. I know what it is to be poor, to need, to hate being in need. I promised myself that I wouldn’t forget.” She moved her shoulders as if soothing an old ache. “When my mother died, I continued to steal.”

  “Why?”

  “Two reasons. The first is that it gave me the opportunity to spread the wealth of people who would have kept it locked in both hands, or buried in dark vaults. Madeline Moreau’s sapphire was liquidated into a hefty contribution to the Widows’ and Orphans’ Fund.”

  Philip pitched his cigarette over the terrace, then took a long drink of cooling coffee. “Are you trying to tell me you’ve been playing Robin Hood?”

  Adrianne thought that one out. It was an interesting and appealing comparison. “In a manner of speaking, but it’s more honest to say it’s a business. I do take a commission. Not only is stealing expensive when you consider the overhead in equipment and time, but it pays to keep up appearances. Besides, I don’t like being poor.”

  “I never had much use for it myself.” He plucked a flower out of the centerpiece and twirled it. “How much commission?”

  “That would vary, generally between fifteen and twenty percent, depending on the initial outlay for the job. For example, the St. Johns’ jewelry.” She ticked off on her fingers. “I had my airfare, my hotel bill—this one. I wouldn’t count the bill at the El Grande.”

  “Naturally not.”

  “Then there’s food, the maid’s uniform and wig—oh, and a few long distance calls. Any shopping or excursions are, of course, my own expense.”

  “Of course.”

  She met his eyes with a level look. “You’re in a difficult position to judge, Philip, since you spent a great deal of your life being a thief.”

  “I’m not judging, I’m amazed. First you’re telling me that you did all of these jobs, all of these years, on your own.”

  “That’s right. Didn’t you?”

  “Yes, but …” He held up a hand. “All right. Now you’re telling me that for the past few years you’ve been giving away all except a fifteen to twenty percent commission?”

  “More or less.”

  “An eighty percent contribution to charity.”

  “In my way, I’m a philanthropist.” Then she grinned. “And I do enjoy my work. You know how it feels to hold millions in your hands. To watch diamonds glitter in your palms and know they’re yours because you’re clever.”

  “Yes.” He understood all too well. “I know how it feels.”

  “And when the night’s cold and the wind’s in your face as you scale a building. Your hands are steady as rocks and your mind is so sharp it’s like the edge of a knife. The anticipation is so great—it’s like the instant before you open a bottle of Dom Pérignon, just that instant before the cork flies off and all the excitement bubbles out.”

  He drew another cigarette out of the pack. It was more than that, he thought. It was a bit like the instant before your seed and the passion with it burst out of you and into a woman. “I know how addictive it can be. I also know there comes a time to quit while you’re on top.”

  “Like you did?”

  “That’s right. A smart gambler knows when the odds are stacking up too high and when it comes time to change games.” He blew out smoke. “You’ve given me one reason, Add
y. What’s the other?”

  She didn’t answer immediately, but instead rose and moved to the railing overlooking the beach. She couldn’t say she trusted him. Indeed, why should she? But like recognized like. He’d been a thief, and perhaps was enough of one still to appreciate what she planned to do without understanding her great need to do it.

  “I’ll need some assurance first.” She turned so that the warm breeze caught at her hair to blow it, rich, black, and fragrant, away from her face.

  “Of what sort?” Though even as he asked he saw something in her eyes, something in the way she stood that made him realize he would have promised her anything. A realization like that numbed a man.

  “That what I tell you stays between us. That it won’t be