Billionaires Prefer Blondes

by Suzanne Enoch

  “I don’t know how many ways I can say it, Samantha, but Gorstein wasn’t impressed by you or charmed by you. That—”

  “I don’t know about that.”

  “That makes him dangerous,” Rick continued, as though she hadn’t interrupted. “He will not look the other way like Frank Castillo does. And I’d rather risk a trial based on nothing but speculation and rumor than on photos or recordings of you chatting with felons.”

  Even the word trial made her break out in a cold sweat. For a long moment she gazed at Rick’s profile as he ate, half his attention apparently on Law & Order. He knew how to push her buttons, and she had no doubt that he was trying to scare her into staying put.

  “Frank does not look the other way. He gets that I have my own way of doing things.”

  “He gets that you helped him solve two murders,” Rick countered.

  “I could charm Gorstein if I wanted to. Under the circumstances, I didn’t see the point.”

  “Mm-hm.”

  “What does that mean?”

  Rick looked at her as he slurped in a chow mein noodle. “What does what mean?”

  “‘Mm-hm.’ I charmed you, buddy. I can charm anybody.”

  So there. Samantha stacked the empty rice box into the chicken. Wilder would clean up the mess, but she still felt uncomfortable about having people sweeping up after her. Housekeepers and butlers were well and good, but she disliked leaving a trail of evidence about her comings and goings for someone else to wipe away.

  When she’d straightened up as much as she could considering that Rick was still eating, she stood. “I’m going to bed. And tomorrow, when you have your hotel meeting at the office, I’m going shopping again. Your social schedule’s been wearing my wardrobe pretty thin.” Because she couldn’t seem to let an argument go without knowing exactly where he stood, she stopped in the doorway. “If we’re still going to be socially active. Together, I mean.”

  Rick’s plate clattered to the table. With that athlete quickness of his, he stood and crossed the room to stand in front of her. Before she could take a breath to respond to whatever he was about to say, he grabbed her arms and jerked her up against him. His mouth closed over hers, hot and insistent and tasting faintly of cream cheese wontons.

  He overwhelmed her senses; he always did, no matter how jaded she was and how much she knew about need and greed and what steps people took to protect their own interests. Apparently—no, obviously—he considered her one of his interests.

  She moaned, tangling her fingers into his black, wavy hair as he planted his palms on her ass and pulled her hard against his hips. God, how could she give this up?

  “We’re not finished,” he murmured in between kisses. “And whatever I might think is best, I know you want to get some answers. Just promise me that you’ll be low-key about it, and that you won’t do anything to give Gorstein’s suspicions teeth.”

  With luck, Gorstein wouldn’t have a clue what she was up to. “I promise, Rick.”

  He ran his hands up under her T-shirt. “Then let’s take this upstairs, shall we?”

  “Heck, yeah.”

  She hoped that eventually he would understand why she couldn’t just sit back and do nothing. It felt as though her old life was rising up to drown her, and she couldn’t just let it go—not for either of their sakes. Rick trusted her, but he didn’t trust her old life. And at the moment, neither did she.

  When she woke up the next morning, it was nearly nine o’clock. Jeez. A little time in the slam clearly exhausted her. Rick was nowhere to be seen, but he nearly always got up before she did. It made sense; his business tended to start early, while her old life rarely began until well after nightfall.

  With a stretch she got up and went into the bathroom. He’d left a sticky note on the mirror, and she smiled as she read it. “Out buying hotel. Call me for lunch? Love you, Rick.”

  Yep, that was her guy, and she did love him back. So much it scared her sometimes. Not for anybody else would she risk her freedom and her future the way she did just by spending each day with him. Other times, though, she wanted to knock him in the head and tell him to stop trying to be her conscience. She wasn’t the only one who’d played with the law in this house, after all—even if her games had been of the easier-to-spot and simpler-to-prosecute kind.

  Okay, she might do lunch with him, especially if it would help keep his level of suspicion down. The first phone call of the day, though, was for somebody else.

  Once she’d dressed and thrown on some high-end shopping-appropriate makeup, she grabbed her cell phone and dialed Stoney’s mobile number. Thank goodness she’d been able to talk him into getting a cell phone; since no one had arrested her after Rick got her one, he’d probably decided it was pretty safe.

  “Hola,” his voice came.

  “Hola, big guy. Cómo estás?”

  “I think I have Chee·tos wedged in my butt after spending the night on Delroy’s damn couch,” he retorted. “I’m moving to a hotel.”

  “Don’t make it the Manhattan,” she returned. That would be great. Stoney staying at the hotel Rick was trying to buy.

  “Deal. When are we meeting?”

  She glanced at the nearest clock. “How about half an hour at the Amsterdam Avenue entrance of Trump Tower?”

  “Gotcha. Am I a tourist, or a businessman?”

  She thought about it for a second. “I’m dressed to shop Madison Avenue, so you be a tourist. And we’re using the old signals.”

  “Martin knows the signals,” he said after a moment, his voice more serious.

  “But the cops don’t. Since they weren’t too happy about letting me go, they might try to keep an eye on me. The head detective once tried to bust Martin. I don’t want this getting any more tangled than it already is.”

  He snorted. “Yeah, because your usual amount of trouble is enough.”

  She blew him a raspberry.

  “Hey, I didn’t even point out that before you went straight, you never used to have this kind of trouble.”

  “Except for that last job. You know, the one where the security guard got blown up and I had to save the homeowner’s life.”

  “Speaking of whom, how is Addison these days?”

  “He still doesn’t know anything. And I’m going to keep it that way for as long as I can. It’ll be a big deal to him, Stoney, if Martin’s alive.”

  “If. And it wouldn’t be your fault.”

  “It’s not about fault. It’s about having me around with Martin on the loose. If.”

  “I mean it, Sam—crime is simpler.”

  “Yes, but I like these sleeping arrangements better.”

  “Uh-huh. See you at ten, then, honey.”

  All of her things—keys, mirror, small roll of duct tape, paperclips, lipstick, cash, the credit cards she’d been slowly accumulating—were in the black purse she’d used last night. She pulled another purse out of the closet, looking at each of the items before she transferred them, and dumped the black purse into the trash. Maybe she was paranoid, but after last night she didn’t want it anywhere around her, just in case somebody could use it to track her.

  She’d never thought that living the straight life would be more expensive than staying on the fringes, but then she hadn’t counted on living with a guy who bought hotels for fun. The black bag had been a $440 Louis Vuitton, which she’d bought for a charity luncheon in Palm Beach two months ago. “Crap,” she muttered.

  As soon as the cab Wilder had called for her rolled away from the curb, Samantha pulled the mirror from her new purse and began fiddling with her hair. Or pretending to. A couple of seconds after they turned the corner, a brown Ford Taurus made the same turn. Probably a coincidence, but she kept an eye on it, anyway.

  By the time they reached 59th Street, the Taurus was still one car behind the cab. Shit. She leaned forward, rapping on the plastic dividing the driver from the passenger compartment. “Make a left up the next one-way street you can, and drop me
off halfway down,” she instructed. “Don’t pull over. Just stop.”

  “Qué?” he said, looking half around.

  She repeated the request in Spanish, and the driver nodded.

  “Okay, señorita.”

  “Bueno.” Pulling twenty bucks from a pocket, she fed it through the divider.

  He did as she asked, and two minutes later she jumped out of the cab and headed back up the street against traffic. Tempting as it was to wave, she ignored the Taurus as it drove past her and then accelerated. They would be calling for backup, so as soon as they turned the corner she stopped and hailed another cab heading in the same direction as the cop car.

  “Trump Tower,” she said to the driver in the turban.

  “Trump Tower. No problem.”

  Let the cops try to tail a cab in New York once they’d lost sight of it. Ha. But her hunch had been right; Gorstein was having her followed. That wasn’t going to make things any easier.

  Before she’d moved to Palm Beach, Florida, three years earlier and limited her thefts to the occasional interesting grab, she’d pulled maybe a dozen high-class thefts in New York alone, not counting the grabs at Sotheby’s and Christie’s. She wasn’t sure she would call them happy memories, but they’d definitely been exhilarating ones.

  And she’d given it up for Rick—well, not just for him, but also for herself, for a future where she wouldn’t have to spend every moment looking over her shoulder, waiting to be caught—though with the way crimes kept happening around her, nothing much seemed to have changed. Nothing, that was, except for the fact that she didn’t get to profit from the lawbreaking, any longer.

  Stoney had a map, a camera, and a pair of sunglasses, topped by a Detroit Tigers baseball cap which covered his bald, black head. “Excuse me,” he said, edging up to her as she drew even with him, “I’m looking for Trump Tower. Can you give me a hand?”

  “No, I need both of mine,” she returned, looping her arm around his and heading him toward the curb.

  “Hey, I thought we were using the codes,” he grumbled, lowering his sunglasses to glare at her over the rims.

  “And you did. I happen to know that I was being followed, and that I lost them. Let’s get going.”

  “Going where?” Stoney replied, holding out his map hand to hail another cab.

  “Where would you start if you were trying to track down Martin?” she countered, slipping onto the worn black cab seat and sliding over so he could join her.

  “He always found me. Assuming that you didn’t eat some bad seafood or something and that he really is alive, I don’t think he’d be inclined to answer any of the code ads we could place in the newspaper.”

  “I’m hoping I did eat something funny, but that wouldn’t explain who took the Hogarth. And I agree; under the circumstances, I doubt he would be happy to be found. We used to spend a lot of time in New York, though, before we split company. He took me to some of his hangouts, but not all of them.”

  Stoney sighed. “He would have taken you to all of them, if I’d let him. A ten-year-old girl at Hannigan’s, hustling tips.”

  “Hannigan’s Bar,” Samantha told the driver. “On the waterfront.”

  The disgust in Stoney’s voice surprised her a little. She knew that she’d probably spent more time living with Stoney than with Martin, but it had never really occurred to her that the arrangement had been anything but for convenience’ sake. “I used to make pretty good money toting drinks at Hannigan’s.”

  “You used to distract the other cats and cons while they were drinking and telling Martin about grabs they’d contracted to do.”

  Samantha lifted an eyebrow. “He undercut his own friends’ jobs?”

  “Whenever he thought he could get away with it.”

  “You never talked about Martin this way before,” she noted.

  “He got caught right when you turned eighteen, and then died three years later. I figured you had your own way of doing things, and didn’t need to hear about some of the crap he pulled.”

  “I knew about a lot of it. But in all honesty, he pretty much taught me everything I know about being a cat.”

  “He taught you the mechanics. You gave yourself a conscience and some pretty high standards.” He looked out the window for a long moment, then cleared his throat and turned back. “I mean, I’ve”—he glanced forward at their driver—“redistributed for dozens of cats. You’re the only one who refused to ever hit a museum.”

  Samantha grimaced. “I know I wasn’t that easy to work with.”

  “Don’t you apologize, honey. I was…” He cleared his throat again. “I was proud of you. And as much of a pain as a security business and keeping company with a pushy billionaire is, I’m still proud of you.”

  For a minute Samantha struggled not to give in to tears. Since she didn’t think she could talk without blubbering, she leaned over and kissed Stoney on the cheek. “Thanks,” she whispered.

  “Yeah, well, I’d be just as proud of you if you decided to unretire and take a couple of those European jobs I keep getting calls about.”

  “Ask me again in a week,” Samantha returned. Free and easy in Cannes, or being tailed and jailed by the NYPD. If not for Rick, the decision wouldn’t have been all that difficult.

  Stoney led the way into Hannigan’s. Fourteen years later it seemed smaller, cheaper, and smellier than Samantha remembered, but some of the faces, even at eleven o’clock in the morning, were familiar.

  “If it ain’t Stoney and Baby Jellicoe,” the bartender said loudly.

  A couple of patrons headed out the back door in response, but none of them was Martin. So some of her old cronies didn’t want to be associated with her. It was weird, but not much of a surprise. After all, she actually had contacts now who were lawyers and cops.

  “We’re looking for an old friend of ours,” Stoney said, plunking himself on one of the barstools.

  “Who might that be?”

  “He’ll know if he hears, and you’d know if you saw him,” Samantha put in. “And if you see him, give me a call.” She handed over a business card with her cell phone number written on the back.

  “Jellicoe Security. Damn. So is it a scam, or are you on the side of the angels now, Baby Jellicoe?”

  “I haven’t decided yet. But if you call me with the right information, I’ve got a ton of cash with your name on it.”

  “I bet you do. I’ve seen you on the news. Saw you yesterday morning, in cuffs. I laughed.”

  Samantha leaned over the bar. “Did you now, Louie?” she murmured. “And did you see anything that would make you think I couldn’t kick your ass?” She used to live among these people, though most of them couldn’t match the grabs she’d made. They weren’t nice people, for the most part. Falling back into their old lookin’-out-for-number-one mentality was like putting on an old, comfortable shirt.

  The bartender’s last snort sounded more like a choke. “Come on, you have to admit, you don’t see a Jellicoe in cuffs very often. Not since they brought in your dad.”

  Aha. “And that was funny, why?”

  “Because he used to say he’d never get caught. Nobody was slicker than Martin. And then he ends up dying in the slam. It’s funny. Ironic funny, I guess.”

  Okay, not haha funny. “Ironic. Yeah. So don’t forget to call me if you see anything.”

  In the back of the bar where the shadows seemed to have been designed as part of the decor, a chair scooted back noisily. “Hey, Stoney, I like your camera. That your new gig now, paparazzi to famous Baby Jellicoe?”

  “Willits,” Stoney grunted, facing the voice. “Why don’t you come over here and smile, and we’ll see if your picture goes up in the post office?”

  “Let’s go,” Sam muttered. “They don’t know anything we need.”

  “Okay,” Stoney returned, gesturing her toward the door. He’d cover her back, just in case. “I’m thinking maybe Doffler next.”

  With a sigh, Samantha nodded. “I hate
that guy.”

  Chapter 9

  Thursday, 12:25 p.m.

  Richard stood sipping a hot cup of tea and looking out the fiftieth-story window of his New York office. Behind him a half dozen of his people argued with a half dozen of Hoshido’s staff over lease transfers and property tax benefits. As he’d suspected, things weren’t going as smoothly today—apparently the opposition saw the Hogarth robbery as a chink in his armor. “You know, from here Edison Towers on Forty-seventh and Broadway looks appealing,” he commented. “Kyle, give their management a call and get me a conversation with the owner.”

  “Yes, sir.” Kyle reached for one of the conference room phones.

  “I beg your pardon,” one of Hoshido’s lawyers said, “but wouldn’t it make more sense to conclude your negotiations with us before you look at another hotel? The Edison and the Manhattan are in competing locations, anyway.”

  Rick smiled at him. “Yes, they are. And if you keep handing me that proprietary parking bullshit, you can go home and Hoshido can compete with me at the Edison Towers.”

  “This is a negotiation, Mr. Addison,” the attorney returned, his jaw tight. “Nothing’s been set in stone.”

  “Mm-hm. I’m just beginning to wonder whether you have Hoshido’s best interests or your own in mind, Mr. Rail-smith.”

  “The—”

  The phone at the head of the table rang on line one. “Excuse me.” Rick walked over to pick it up. “Addison.”

  “Sir, it’s Sarah,” came the soft British voice at the other end. “The profit reports for Kingdom Fittings came in today, but Omninet and Afra are late. Do you want what I have, or should I wait until the other two come in?”

  “You did tell them how much I want those reports,” he said.

  “Several times,” she returned. Even over the phone he could hear her disgust. “Apparently they want to hear it from someone other than your secretary.”

  Yes, they would want to hear it from him. A little cajoling, a little back-patting—he was a master at getting what he wanted. Lately, though, he’d been less single-minded about business, and most of his holdings seemed to know both that and the level of his distraction. “I’ll take care of it,” he said. “Hold on to the Kingdom report until tomorrow. And would you phone John Stillwell at the Sunrise office again and have him call me at this number?”