“So nothing I said is going to make any difference to you.”
“Rick, knock it off.”
“I don’t want to knock it off. We live together. If you’re going to break the law, I think I deserve a heads up.”
She faced him, folding her arms across her chest. “Heads up, Brit. In the next couple of days I’m going to be breaking into Gabriel Toombs’s house.”
“What if I call Viscanti and tell him you’ve located the probable location of his property, and tell him to proceed however he chooses?”
For a long second she sat there, silent. “If you did that,” she finally said, her voice clipped, “I would leave.”
He pulled over and slammed the Jag into park. “Just like that?” he demanded, glaring at her set expression. “No discussion, no argument? If I did something to try to keep you safe, you would just leave? That’s ridiculous.”
“I’m not going to argue about this. You know it’s not about keeping me safe. Something like just taking every decision away from me—I can’t even—Fuck this.” She hit her seat belt release and shoved open the door. “I can’t believe you threatened me with that,” she said quietly, her voice shaking. Then she got out of the car and slammed the door behind her.
For a second Richard sat there. Christ. He was used to the bluff and bravado method of negotiation, but she had said it so…matter-of-factly. Like she meant it. And she hadn’t tried to argue. She hadn’t even wanted to argue. She’d just walked away. People didn’t walk away from him. Especially not Samantha.
He climbed out of the car and slammed the door shut. She was thirty feet in front of him, walking quickly in her burgundy heels down the sidewalk. “Samantha.”
“Get back in the car,” she said, not slowing. “I’m walking home. I need to think.”
More than anything else, the even tone of her voice bothered him. Bothered him—hell, it frightened him. Cars driving along the street were slowing down; in a couple of seconds cell phones would be snapping photos and taking videos. The spat would probably make the evening news, and then the entertainment shows tomorrow. He could pay attention to that, be annoyed by the unanticipated publicity, or he could take care of the very large problem at hand. Because he had the feeling that if he waited until she got home, gave her time to think over whatever she was considering, things would get much worse.
“Am I wrong to be worried about you putting yourself in danger for a paycheck you don’t even need?” he asked, striding after her.
“It’s not about the fucking paycheck,” she snapped, not slowing. “And you know it, slick.”
He heard anger in her voice this time. That and the name-calling was good. He could work with, understand, her emotions better than her version of logical assessment. “I don’t want you to get arrested and sent to prison, especially not for the sake of a museum exhibit.”
“That stuff belongs in the museum—not in Wild Bill Toombs’s spare bedroom. I accepted the job, and I’m going to make it right.”
Richard caught up and clutched her shoulder, turning her around to face him. “You can’t make every job a crusade.”
Samantha jabbed a finger into his chest. “You can’t decide which jobs are important to me. And you don’t get to decide what I do for a living or to try to go around me to shut me down. If you can’t live with it, then we can’t live together.”
Just barely he resisted the sudden urge—need—to grab her and keep her there, keep her in his life. “That’s somewhat drastic, don’t you think?” he managed, his tone harder than he would have wished. “We should be able to reach a compromise.”
“A compromise? What the hell do you think I’ve been doing for the past twelve months? I was making over two million dollars a year before we met. Now I’m installing security cameras. I have a damn office with a coffeemaker. What’s your compromise, Rick?”
He opened his mouth to respond, but everything he might say would only make things worse. When put in a weaker position, change the subject and attack. “You haven’t compromised as much as you claim.”
“Excuse me?”
“You put on a good show,” he returned, “but every time we argue you get ready to leave. No roots at all. Especially not in the bloody garden I gave you.”
“The—I’ve been busy.”
“If I don’t get to decide what you do for a living, you don’t get to blame me for it, either. You could have left me a year ago. I asked you to design the gallery wing at Rawley Park, but the security business was your idea.”
“I couldn’t keep doing what I was doing and be around you.”
“No, you couldn’t.” Tentatively he reached out to brush a strand of her hair back behind her ear. “And I’m very glad you decided you wanted to be around me. I’d like to be able to count on you being around me for a very long time to come. When the decisions you make threaten that, yes it worries me, and yes it makes me angry. But the decisions are yours. That’s my compromise, I suppose.”
Samantha eyed him, her expression beneath the street lights still not giving much away. “You could probably convince a penguin to buy a tuxedo, couldn’t you?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never tried. But if you’re implying that I’m trying to force you to accept something you don’t want or need, I have to disagree. I think I’m good for you. I know you’re good for me.”
She turned her back on him again, took a step away, and stopped. Richard didn’t move. As he’d said, and however much he disliked it, the decision was hers. Even so, he couldn’t help holding his breath as he watched her.
Her shoulders rose and fell as she took a deep breath. Then she faced him, stepped up, and tangled her hands into his hair to pull his face down and kiss him.
Richard closed his eyes for a second as he kissed her back, tasting chocolate faintly on her lips. A couple of months ago they’d fought, and Samantha had slashed his tires and fled England for Palm Beach. He’d known even as he’d followed her across the Atlantic, though, that they would make up. That fight had been frustration more than anything else. Tonight, however—this fight scared him. Not a good sign, considering the item he would be picking up from Harry Winston this weekend.
“May we go home?” he asked quietly, running his fingers along her cheeks.
“Yes. But I’m still thinking. And I’m still mad.”
And he was still worried.
As they pulled up in front of Solano Dorado, Samantha’s cell phone rang to the tune of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.” With a sideways glance at Rick she pulled the phone from her purse. “Hi, Aubrey.”
“Miss Samantha. I made a few discreet inquiries, and Wild Bill will be attending the Mallorey soiree on Saturday.”
“You’ll be there too, right?”
“Most definitely.”
“Thanks, Aubrey. I’ll see you in the morning.”
“Good evening, fair lady.”
She hung up, and Ben appeared from the direction of the garage to open her car door for her. Rick usually beat the driver to the punch, but not tonight. Instead he went up the shallow granite steps to the front door as Reinaldo opened it.
Whatever the hell had gotten into him over the past couple of days, she didn’t like it. First the “I’m trusting you” shit, like he was warning her to behave herself. Now tonight he’d apparently decided he needed to step in and remove temptation from her weak little fingers.
As she thought about it, it pissed her off all over again. Especially when she wasn’t even convinced that breaking into the house of a known receiver of stolen goods in search of more stolen treasures was the wrong thing to do. At the top of the steps she brushed past him and went inside.
“Hans is just closing up the kitchen,” Reinaldo said in his light Cuban accent. “Can I get you some coffee or cocoa, or a soda?”
“We’re fine,” Rick answered before she could. “Good night, Reinaldo.”
The housekeeper nodded, backing out again. “Good night, boss, Miss Sam.”<
br />
“Rude much?” she commented over her shoulder, heading upstairs.
“I take it that we’re still arguing.”
“That ramrod goes straight up your British ass when you get mad, doesn’t it?” She could feel the angry heat coming off him as he climbed the stairs behind her. “What the hell are you mad at, anyway?” she continued. “You gave me the garden. That means it’s mine, and I get to work on it if and when I damn well want to.”
“I’m mad because you threatened to leave,” he retorted, surprising her. “Again. And because, yes, I suddenly realized that you still haven’t even made a single bloody phone call about the pool garden, and now because I know what your first instinct still is, and that as soon as we get to the bedroom you’re going into your closet and get that idiotic emergency backpack and then walk out.”
“Wow, you’ve got me all figured out.” At the top of the stairs she turned around and faced him. “You want a compromise?” she demanded, realizing even as she spoke that chickening out of this relationship would be much easier than staying. “I’ll call the nursery in the morning and have somebody come out and look at my plans and start ordering materials. Then I’ll go with you to the Mallorey party on Saturday. And then you will back the hell off and let me do my job for the Met as I see fit.”
Dark blue eyes glared at her. “I don’t like it.”
That stopped her for a second. So she’d found it—his breaking point. She’d always figured it would happen sooner or later. Leaving wasn’t her first instinct any longer, but this wasn’t just an argument. This was about him trying to pull her entire new life out from under her. And for a second she was glad that she was so furious with him, because later it was going to really, really hurt.
“Okay,” she finally said.
He took a step closer. “Okay, what?”
“Okay, I can’t be what you want and still be what I want. So I guess you get to be right one more time. I’ll go get my idiotic backpack and then I’ll call a cab and you will never—never—see me again. Then you won’t have to compro—”
“I said I didn’t like it,” he interrupted. “Not that I couldn’t accept it.”
She blinked. “What?” There was nothing like careening down a road with no brakes and then slamming into a pile of pillows.
Rick shook his head. “Generally I don’t like to tell an opponent my weaknesses, but you’re not precisely an opponent. You’re my weakness, in fact.”
“I make you weak. Give me a break.”
“Don’t threaten me with leaving again.” His fingers clenched and unclenched, and then he walked around her and into the bedroom.
If this was another of his negotiating tactics, it was a good one. He’d managed to undercut her entire tirade. “It wasn’t a threat,” she said, stalking after him. “I meant it.”
“I know you meant it.” His butt vanished into her walk-in closet. “And I hope you realize by now that I’m apparently willing to let you put yourself in danger in order to keep you around. Make whatever demands you want and threaten to leave if you don’t get your way, and I’ll give in.”
“It’s not like that. You were being a total jerk. And what are you doing in there?” She stopped just outside the closet door.
He appeared again, her emergency backpack in his hands. “According to television and the movies, when couples fight and one of them decides to stalk out, they have to go around and collect the pieces of their lives that they’ve entwined with their significant other.” Unzipping the bag, he pulled out a roll of duct tape and a toothbrush. “They don’t keep a pack ready and waiting to leave at any bloody moment.”
“Stop that.”
Ignoring her, he stalked into the bathroom and put the toothbrush into the medicine cabinet beside the one she used daily. Then, still holding the pack, he went to the balcony door, opened it, and tossed the duct tape down into the pool. He reached into the backpack again and came up with her spare jogging shoes, which got tossed back into her closet along with the T-shirt, jeans, pair of underwear and socks she kept in reserve.
The cash he dumped into her nightstand, along with the small coil of copper wire and the flashlight. The disposable cell phone went into the waste basket.
“Don’t make me kick your ass, Addison,” she warned, though in truth she felt more surprised than angry. Rick lost control so rarely, and this was a doozy.
Returning to the bed, he turned the backpack upside down and dumped the remaining bits—fake passport and driver’s license, paper clips, pen, pad of paper, tube of lipstick—onto the coverlet before sweeping it all into the waste basket. Then he unzipped the small outer pocket and pulled out the Swiss army knife she kept in there, though how he’d known about it, she had no idea. He opened it, and proceeded to slash the backpack to shreds before he threw it away, sent the knife into the night stand, and slammed it shut. “There.”
Feeling like her jaw was hanging open, Samantha stared at him. That pack—a pack—had been part of her life since she and Martin had left her mother. For the ensuing twenty years she’d kept one ready, and had made good use of it on more than one occasion. And Rick in his gray Armani suit and black and gray tie had just trashed it. Not just trashed it, but demolished it.
“You threw my duct tape into the pool,” she said, focusing on the most obvious offense.
“I didn’t want to walk it down to the utility room.”
Her gaze went to the crumpled, ripped blue pack sticking out of the mahogany waste basket. “This wouldn’t stop me if I wanted to go.”
“I know that.” He blew out his breath. “Now it just won’t be as easy.” Rick dusted his hands off on his slacks and walked up to her. “Do you want to leave?”
“You tried to step all over my—”
“You’re backtracking,” he cut in. “We had an argument, and I gave in. Do you want to leave?”
“Your way of giving in looks kind of like you conceding one point and then demolishing my stuff.”
“Do you—”
“No, I don’t want to leave. Of course I don’t want to leave.”
“Good.” He touched her wrists with his fingers, sliding his hands around slowly to embrace her.
“But,” she continued, unwilling to let him believe that by trashing her stuff he’d erased every reservation she’d ever had, “if we aren’t compatible, I’m thinking we should figure that out now.”
“We’re compatible,” he said, backing away a little to meet her gaze. “Stubborn and arrogant and independent, but compatible.”
“You’re that sure?”
“It’s hearts and minds, Samantha. What my heart wants, my mind will bend, fold, and mutilate in order for me to have. We may not be there yet, but I have no intention of letting you walk out of here.”
He spoke softly, but she heard the steel in his voice. For a second she wondered what he would have done if she had actually seriously tried to leave. Not just throw a fit and stalk out for a day or two, as she’d done before, but leave for good.
His blue eyes studied her face, trying to figure out what she was thinking. Rick Addison was a man who could buy and sell most of the world, and he knew how to get what he wanted. He expected to get what he wanted. Man, she must frustrate him, just like he frustrated her. She’d spent her life maneuvering and manipulating, seeing every other person as a mark to be taken advantage of or an enemy or an ally to be dealt with accordingly. He saw through all of her shit. She’d been more honest with him than she had anyone else in her life, with the possible exception of Stoney—wherever the hell he was.
“Have you noticed that our fights are getting more serious?” she finally asked, moving her arms to break his grip.
“That’s because we’re getting more serious. The stakes are higher.” She felt his gaze on her as she headed toward the balcony door that overlooked the pool area. “Air?”
“I’m going to fish the duct tape out of the pool before it clogs the filter,” she said, pushing open
the door and stepping onto the small balcony. Then she stopped and looked back into the suite. “You’ve had more experience with the whole relationship thing than I have,” she said, taking a dig at his nasty, failed ex-marriage even though she knew she should probably shut up and leave fairly okay alone, “but once in a while, instead of the logic thing and attacking or negotiating your way into coming out ahead, you might just try apologizing.”
“Mm hm. Maybe next time.”
Samantha blew out her breath as she descended the red stone stairs. Leaving, staying, offended, worried, hurt—arguing with Rick was tough. She’d pulled jobs that left her less mentally and physically tired. Her dad, Martin, wouldn’t have gotten why she’d bothered to stay and fight—after all, he’d taken himself and her and left their house without even looking back. Look out for number one, and get rid of anything that might get in the way of that. That was the first and most important rule of survival in Martin’s thief world. And once she’d met Rick, that was the first rule she’d begun to chip away at.
Obviously she still had some more work to do. Rick kept pushing at her, but he wasn’t Mr. Perfect, either. Too many people asked how high when he said jump, and he’d gotten used to that.
She found the pool net and managed to fish out the roll of duct tape from the deep end without getting chlorinated water all over her dress. Then she sat at one of the tables surrounded by the low area lights, and listened to the sound of the nearby ocean. Man, she felt wiped out. And angry as she’d been, more than anything else she’d wanted a reason not to leave. Even Rick demolishing her emergency backpack hadn’t freaked her out like she’d thought it would.
She stayed by the pool for nearly an hour, until her bare legs and arms began to goose pimple in the light ocean breeze. Rick hadn’t come down to see what she was doing, and she had to give him credit for that. At least he’d realized that she needed a little space, a breather without him analyzing and countering everything she did or didn’t say.
A Touch of Minx Page 18