I scowl. More doublespeak. She means, of course, that the only reason I married him was to keep close tabs on his movements and leverage the relationship for my own purposes.
Whatever. It takes one to know one.
“In fact, I agree with her,” Tara continues, blithe as can be. “I think you should tell her what I’m doing here. That way, we can prep her on what to say if they bring her in for questioning.”
“If they bring her in for questioning, we’re screwed either way. Penelope can’t lie to save her life.”
“Hey!” I protest. “I’ll have you know I’m an excellent liar. I lie to you all the time.”
His expression, when he turns it my way, is grim. “What makes you think I don’t know that?”
I’m flummoxed enough, I can’t reply right away.
“You’re right, though,” Grant says to Tara. “We have to do something with her. She’s too much of a wild card to leave hanging.”
“But I thought you said she won’t play along.”
“She won’t—that’s the problem. She’s always hated doing anything that might make my life easier. What she needs is plausible deniability.”
“I’m standing right here,” I say. “I can hear you.”
Grant turns to me with a half grimace, a twist of his mouth I can’t quite read. If I didn’t suspect this is all part of some secret government plot to drive me over the edge, I’d think he was almost remorseful.
Well, if he’s not remorseful now, he will be soon. I told him once that it was hard to get rid of me. He’d see how much I meant it. He’d discover I had no intention of letting him walk out of my life without a fight.
“Whatever you do to me, I’ll hunt you down,” I warn. “I’ll track you and follow you and run all your carefully laid plans right into the ground.”
He studies me carefully. “Is that a promise?”
I glare. “Absolutely.”
“Deal.” He nods once. “You heard the lady. We’ll have to do this the hard way. She’s not going to rest until she has my head on a platter.”
“That’s not the part of you I plan on carving.”
He’s surprised into a chuckle. “This might actually work in our favor, now that I think about it. If we can make them believe I turned on my own wife—”
“You are turning on your own wife.”
He casually ignores me. “That should erase any lingering doubts about my intentions. It’s not how I prefer to do things, but that’s usually the case where Penelope is concerned. I can only take what she gives me. Which, unfortunately, is never as much as I want.”
“I still think it would be easier to just tell her—”
“No. Trust me. It’s better like this. I know how she works.”
Not true. If he did, he’d realize how close he is to being murdered right now.
Tara casts her reluctance aside with a shrug. “It’s your funeral. Let’s tie her up so we can get on with it.”
“Agreed.”
“Hey, now.” I take a step back, my hands up. “I think you two have had enough fun. There’s no need to make empty threats.”
“It’s not an empty threat. I am going to tie you up.”
“Grant—you wouldn’t.”
“I don’t have any other choice. You brought this on yourself.” He lunges for me, but what I noticed the other day while I was hiding in the jewelry store air vent is true. Big means slow, and small means fast. I duck before he’s able to get a grip.
It’s half a victory, because now I’m trapped in the hallway. The only door at this end leads to the bathroom, and even though a window exit isn’t out of the question, there’s no way I’ll have enough time to slip out before I’m caught.
Grant knows it, too. He takes a step toward me, using his wide shoulders to create a blockade. Instinct has me glancing toward Tara in hopes of finding an ally, but she’s conveniently disappeared.
“I won’t hurt you,” he says. “It’ll only be for a few minutes.”
“Don’t come near me. I’ll lock myself in the bathroom.”
“I’ll break down the door.”
“Not before I escape out the window.”
“The latch sticks. You won’t make it in time.”
He draws closer and closer with each word. A sense of danger has heightened my awareness of him, making him appear to grow to epic proportions as he draws near, his body heat lulling me into complicity.
I fight it with the only thing I have left. “Stop. Wait. You know who that woman is, don’t you?”
“I do, actually,” he says. “Someone dear to me once dropped a helpful tip about her.”
I’m the one who stops. I’m the one who waits. I think we all know who that someone was.
“Tara Lewis, one of the most sought-after cat burglars in the world.” Grant appears pensive as he mentally brings up her file. “Put on the FBI watch list before she was legally allowed to vote, married the Blue Fox before she was legally allowed to drink, and believed to be responsible for over fifty million dollars in theft in the United States alone, including the attempt on the Mint back in ’09. She’s the second-best jewel thief I know.”
There it is. He knows. He knows this woman is my stepmother, knows what she did to me, and he still considers her an asset. He’s still choosing her over me.
Grant lunges again. I don’t put up a fight this time, and he catches me easily. It’s a heady feeling, being overpowered and held to his chest, especially when he scoops me into his arms. His heart beats faster against mine—evidence of the adrenaline of the chase—but he’s not the least bit winded by my weight.
If anything, he’s made more confident by my struggle, and he drops a kiss on the side of my mouth. It’s a brief touch, but it’s enough for the impression of his lips to mark mine, for the slightly minty taste of him to linger.
“Don’t be angry,” he croons. “I don’t like this any more than you do.”
That jolts me enough to fight back, but it’s too late. Grant has no intention of letting me go, and he hoists me over his shoulder as he enters the living room. There are only so many times I can wriggle and ineffectively punch at the strong breadth of his back before I give up.
“There’s a length of rope in the toolbox under the sink,” he says to Tara as soon as the struggle ends.
“Rope is taking things kind of far, don’t you think?” she asks.
“No. Rope is exactly what’s called for.”
“I hate you,” I say, but no one listens to me.
Grant swings me off his shoulder and onto his favorite leather chair, which deflates with a whoosh as my weight hits. He looms over the top of me, quickly quashing any thought of escape. His legs hit mine, pinning me against the chair, and his arms crash down on either side of me. His lips are inches from mine. It’s a very erotic position—possessive and domineering—but he doesn’t make a move to kiss me.
“What I’m doing isn’t as terrible as you think,” he says, his voice low. “Can’t you find it somewhere in your black, thieving little heart to trust me?”
My black, thieving little heart pounds, taking up residence somewhere in my throat. He knows everything. He has all the power. He’s won.
“Trust you? Please.” He’s still too near, too earnest, so I force myself to focus on reality. This man works for an organization that would happily put me and everyone I love behind bars, even after all we’ve been through together. There are black hearts, and then there are black souls. “I’d sooner trust a snake.”
“One year we’ve been married. One year I’ve never done anything to hurt you—and believe me, you’ve done plenty to provoke it. Don’t you think I deserve some of your confidence by now?”
I provoke him? I set my jaw. “No.”
He sighs and lifts one of his jail-bar arms long enough to r
un his finger along my cheek. It’s a mocking gesture, condescending in the extreme, but his expression doesn’t match. His mouth is a flat line; his eyes carry the look of a wounded animal. “You really do think I’m the enemy here, don’t you?”
Of course I do. That’s what he is.
“If only you knew how much I—” he begins and draws a deep breath, shaking his head.
I hold perfectly still, waiting for him to finish, but there’s no time. Tara returns with a coiled rope under one arm and a handful of zip ties in the other.
“I thought these might be more humane,” she suggests, indicating the latter.
“I don’t want humane.” Grant takes the rope and begins unwinding it with fearful efficiency. This clearly isn’t his first time tying up a woman. “We need it to look real. A little rope burn goes a long way in situations like these.”
“If you so much as bruise one of my wrists…”
“I’ll kiss it and make it better later, I promise.”
If Grant and I were the only ones in the room, I like to think I would have fought more. I’m not a woman who goes along quietly, and he deserves to have his eyes scratched out for how tight he makes the ropes across my chest and over my thighs—two areas he’s never going to come near again, if I have anything to say about it. But there’s something undignified about engaging in a marital squabble with another person present, so I sit with quiet loathing while he goes to work instead.
That decision turns out to be a good one, since it allows me a moment to observe Tara without my husband’s watchful eyes on me. As expected, time has been good to her, settling her with poise and confidence in addition to her phenomenal good looks. She was always a little coltish when I first knew her, as if she hadn’t yet grown into her skin, but she’s definitely grown into it now. There isn’t a cell in her body she’s not acutely aware of and working to the max.
I can tell she’s performing a similar assessment on me. Whatever she finds isn’t nearly as complimentary, because an expression of aversion moves over her, drawing at her perfectly arched brows like the strings of a curtain.
Well, too bad. Maybe I would have done a better job glamming it up if she hadn’t run off and left me for dead. I hope she gets wrinkles from all that disgust.
Grant tugs on a knot and steps back, a look of appreciation on his face as he appraises me strapped to his favorite chair in true shibari fashion. I refuse to give him the satisfaction of wriggling in discomfort, so I settle in with the same forced calm I use when I’m trapped in an air vent. This man has no idea how long I can sit without twitching a muscle.
Or maybe he does. I’m so confused right now.
“Okay,” Grant says and gestures toward the safe, which I realize is wide open. “Tara, you can go ahead and grab the necklace. Make sure you leave lots of fingerprints. I need there to be no doubt you’re involved.”
“We’ve been seen around town for days now. I’m pretty sure everyone knows we’re involved.”
Grant leans close to me. “Not that kind of involved, in case you’re worried.”
“I’m not.”
“You were worried before.”
“I was angry. It’s different.”
“This isn’t how I wanted things to turn out,” he says, and then, with what I’m sure is feigned concern, “Do you want another glass of water?”
“No, I don’t want any stupid water. What I want is a divorce.”
His jaw tightens. “Too bad,” he says and promptly ignores me to watch Tara plant clumsy evidence all over the safe’s exterior and lift the necklace out of its shoebox.
“Holy shit,” she says, holding it up to herself. Seeing the necklace on her perfectly sculpted neck rankles me even more than being tied to a chair, but I don’t have time to protest, because Grant grows equally rigid at the sight of it. He’s at her side in an instant.
“Don’t get any funny ideas,” he chides and slips the necklace into his pocket. “For the time being, this beauty belongs to me. No one else is getting their hands on it until I say so.” He casts a look at me as he speaks, and I can feel my cheeks burn under the intensity of his regard. God, I hope he ends up dropping that stupid necklace off a cliff.
Tara just sighs. “You’re in charge, I guess. So what do we do now?”
“We proceed as planned.”
Tara’s eyes widen. “But what about Pen? We can’t just leave her there.”
“Yes, actually. We can.” Grant leans in to kiss me, but I snap my teeth at him. He settles for a softly planted press of his lips on top of my hair instead. “Sorry, my love, but you leave me no other choice. You’ve always left me no other choice.”
“I swear to all that is good and holy, if you walk out that door without untying me from this chair…” I have a full speech prepared, buckets of names to call him, lawyers to contact to start the divorce proceedings—but it’s no use.
He and Tara are out the door without so much as a good-bye, carrying my necklace and all hope of escape with them.
And that’s when I start to kick and scream and struggle against the ropes that bind me.
13
THE DATE
(Eighteen Months Ago)
“I’m going to kiss you at the end of our date tonight.”
I paused in the middle of pulling open the door to greet Grant. My hair was only halfway curled, one of my eyeballs was bloodshot and raw from the clump of mascara I got in there, and I was still figuring out how to use the iron to get the wrinkles out of my dress, so I was wearing sweatpants.
In other words, it wasn’t my most glamorous moment—as opposed to Agent Ridiculously Handsome standing in the decrepit hallway to my apartment.
“I just wanted to get that clear, right from the start,” he said when I didn’t respond. “If you have any objections to that plan, for any reason whatsoever, now’s a good time to let me know. There’s no telling what I’ll do once this thing gets underway.”
As if I was in any position to stop him. He leaned against the frame of the doorway, filling it with his wide shoulders and the tightly fitting sweater he had pushed to the elbows. His lips were turned up in a smile, his hair was perfectly curled at the ends, and I could see the bulge of a gun at his side. It was a heady combination—this law man and sex god rolled up into one.
I found my tongue. “That kind of takes the fun out of it, don’t you think?”
“On the contrary.” His smile deepened, cementing itself somewhere in my loins. “Now we both have something to look forward to.”
Like a true Southern gentleman—or a vampire—he waited until I invited him in before he crossed the threshold. I could understand why vampires had that rule when he brushed past me, sending jolts of electricity through my sweatpants and up my spine. My apartment, already a minuscule studio whose only valuable feature was a bay window that took up most of one wall, seemed to shrink to nothing once he filled it.
And now that he’d planted the idea of kissing inside my head, I could only imagine what other spaces he might be willing to fill with his massive bulk.
Dammit. This was going to be a long freaking date.
“I’m sorry I’m not ready yet. I need maybe ten more minutes?” I made a vague gesture around the apartment. “Make yourself at home. There might be some expired milk in the fridge if you get desperate.”
He spun in a slow circle, offering me a long, leisurely glimpse at the taut globes of his ass filling his jeans—a sight that didn’t help boost my own self-confidence. This was our third date, and I’d officially run out of cute outfits to wear to them. Any more of these, and I would have to answer the door naked.
When he finished the revolution, there was a line down the center of his brow. “Were you recently robbed?”
“Um…I don’t think so?” I followed the path of his gaze, skimming over the empty walls. A lone fut
on made up my bed and couch in one, and a folding chair was pushed to one side in the rare event I had company. “Although I guess anything is possible in this neighborhood. Whoever the thief was, they were probably disappointed. I’ll leave them something next time.”
“This is your home.” He didn’t phrase it as a question.
“I warned you it wasn’t much.”
“You literally own two pieces of furniture.”
“I told you that already.” My apartment wasn’t that bad. I mean, there weren’t any rats or cockroaches, at least. “You’re the one who wanted to pick me up here ‘like normal people on dates do.’”
He turned his attention from the bleak walls to my not-much-better, sweatpants-wearing self. “I thought maybe you were lying.”
I was about to ask what on earth would possess me to lie about living in semisqualor when I realized I already knew the answer. According to the story we’d set up between us, I was supposed to be a rec center dance teacher, not a successful jewel thief. A poorly furnished apartment in a bad neighborhood would only make sense for the former. Unless, of course, the successful jewel thief in question spent most of her money bailing her good friend Riker out of debt and squirreled the rest away.
But he didn’t know that part.
I knew, though. The sole reason he’d wanted to pick me up was to get a look at my digs, to probe even further into my life. He was fishing again.
I wanted to be mad—throw him out in a fit of indignation, even—but I had to admire his technique. I also couldn’t help but remember the reward waiting for me at the end of this date, that declaration of intent offered by a man so backwardly honorable, he’d lie and sneak and follow me around town and then draw the line at taking advantage of his position without my consent.
There was nothing else to do. I could hardly let him go without at least sampling that kiss.
“What do you know about ironing women’s dresses?” I asked, changing the direction of our conversation a full one-eighty.
Stealing Mr. Right Page 13