Stealing Mr. Right

by Tamara Morgan

“She’ll love it,” he said.

  “Maybe you should ask her first.”

  “She’ll love it,” he repeated.

  “You don’t know that.”

  “I do know it.” He crossed the room and grabbed me, the expression in his eyes so tender, I almost couldn’t look at him head-on. “She’ll love it because I love it.”

  Not wanting to be alone on Christmas seemed like a strange reason to be moved to the extremes of passion, but that was the exact effect it had on Grant. Even though we were vertical—always so damnably vertical—he showed me exactly how he felt about my offer. Hard and strong and determined to suffocate me.

  But then, who needed air at a time like this? I’d have gladly given up my lungs altogether if he held me like that forever.

  “You never cease to surprise me, you know that?” he said.

  I squirmed under the intensity of his regard. “Maybe I only want to stay here without you so I can keep snooping through your stuff.”

  He just smiled.

  “Or maybe I want to rob the place,” I added. “You know what they say. While the cat’s away…”

  “…the mouse is welcome to do whatever she wants,” Grant finished. “The cat likes her too much to care.”

  Damn. My stomach and heart merged into one.

  Grant touched my mouth, one fingertip where his lips had just been, and I felt the rest of my organs give way. He had to know how that undid me, the pressure of his hands against the sensitive and swollen skin that belonged to him alone.

  “I should probably warn you, though,” he said.

  I knew there had to be a catch. There was always a catch. “Uh-oh. What is it?”

  “When you get back to New York, I’m going to ask you to marry me.”

  The edges of my vision went black, and the only thing that kept me standing was Grant’s arm around my waist.

  “I just wanted to get that clear, right from the start.” He echoed the words from our first-ever real date, unconcerned that he held what amounted to a limp rag doll. “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.”

  I blinked up at him, waiting for the punch line, but it didn’t come. Apparently, he was done using his mouth for words.

  And I, unable to form any of my own, didn’t bother fighting it.

  22

  THE STAKEOUT

  (Present Day)

  “I can’t take it anymore,” I announce. Tossing the binoculars that have branded permanent rings around my eyes, I unlock the car door and leap out. The air smells like the back alley we’re currently parked in, but I embrace it as I might a fresh ocean breeze. “I have to know what’s happening in there. I’m going in.”

  Riker tries to reach across the console and pull me back into the passenger’s seat, but I’m fueled by energy drinks and boredom—a lethal combination under the best of circumstances. And these circumstances definitely aren’t the best. I’ve been sitting in this car since yesterday afternoon, performing what can only amount to a stakeout in front of a seedy New Jersey motel, waiting for Tara and Grant to make their move.

  As it turns out, there are some things I enjoy less than being crammed inside an air vent for hours on end. Sitting in a car with a man who won’t even look at me is one of them.

  “I’ll just burst in to room 283, wave a gun, and demand that they give me the goods,” I say, being careful to keep my glance at least a foot above Riker’s head. I made the mistake of eye contact early on in our adventure, and he punished me by not talking for a full five hours. My ears are still ringing from the silence. “They do it in movies all the time. How hard can it be?”

  He snorts his derision. “Considering Grant is probably packing and knows how badly you shoot? Very.”

  I kick the tire, but it doesn’t make me feel better.

  “Get back in the car,” Riker says. “They’ll see you.”

  “No, they won’t, because I don’t think they’re in there. We haven’t even seen a curtain move.”

  “Maybe they’re busy doing…other things.”

  I kick the tire again, this time hard enough to send a jolt of pain up my big toe. “Don’t start, Riker. I’m not in the mood.”

  “Yeah, well, neither am I. It’s not like I asked you to come with me in the first place. I wanted to do this alone.”

  I allow my gaze to drop the twelve inches necessary to look at him and immediately wish I hadn’t. The long day and even longer night of sitting in stiff agony beside me have taken their toll on him. His hair is greasy and hangs limply in his eyes. Dark circles give him a haunted, hunted look. He’s a mere shadow of his sharp, cocky self, and there’s no one to blame for it but me.

  “Riker—” I begin, but I don’t know what to say.

  Riker does, though. He sticks to business—always business. It’s the only thing we have left.

  “Jordan and Oz should be here to relieve us within the next few hours,” he says, his tone clipped. “If there hasn’t been any movement by that time, we can talk about a new plan.”

  I won’t last a few more hours. Grant and Tara are within arm’s reach, and the necklace with them, but instead of marching up to their room and demanding answers, I’m forced to sit here and simmer in hostile silence. We can’t move until we know what we’re dealing with, and we can’t find out what we’re dealing with until they move.

  The inaction is killing me. Or maybe the tension is. At this point, I can’t really tell.

  A glimmer of movement across the street catches my attention, and I latch onto it like it’s a safety line. “Hey—I think I see someone.”

  At first, I assume the familiarly tall and gaunt man lurking near the bulletproof motel clerk’s booth is Oz in yet another flawless disguise, but the figure rounds the corner and disappears as quickly as he arrived. I’m disappointed, but not for long, since a matronly woman in scrubs pushes a cart by a few seconds later.

  “There’s a cleaning lady!” I snap my fingers to get Riker’s attention.

  He leans his head across the console. “So?”

  “She’s making her rounds.”

  “I can see that.”

  “You know who does a really good job of coming and going inside a motel without getting noticed?”

  He jolts up in his seat, all his sullen severity gone in a flash. “Absolutely not. Don’t even think about it.”

  “But that cart of dirty linens looks awfully roomy…”

  “No.”

  “You could distract her with your charm to give me enough time to hop in.”

  “Pen, no.”

  “I won’t even try to get out to investigate, I swear. It’ll be strict recon only, in and out with no one the wiser. Even if Grant and Tara turn her away at the door, it’ll at least give me a chance to confirm whether they’re in there.”

  Riker’s lips form the word no again, but then he stops. “Actually, that’s not the worst idea you’ve ever had.”

  “It’s not? I mean—of course it’s not. If your information is wrong and they’re not in there, we’re wasting our time. It’s only logical. We should have done this hours ago.”

  “Don’t oversell it,” he says dryly. “I already agreed.”

  I immediately clamp my mouth shut and do my best not to set him off in another downward spiral. I don’t think I could survive another one.

  He slides out of the car and surveys the situation across the street. The lone cleaning woman seems to be the only one working, so her progress is necessarily slow, giving him ample time to concoct a plan of action.

  Riker has always been good at this part—seeing the big picture before breaking down a scene into its constituent parts—and today is no different. “Okay. This should be pretty straightfor
ward. I’m going to pull her away by asking her to check out a flooding issue near the ice machine. That should give you time to sneak up from that ledge above the garbage.”

  I see at least four other ways I could access her cart, including walking up the stairs like a normal human being. But it’s obvious that Riker wants to punish me by making me climb on top of garbage cans, so I nod.

  “You’ll have to empty at least half of the towels before you jump in.” He casts a cynical eye over me. “She’ll notice the added weight. You haven’t been running.”

  This time, nodding and playing nice costs me the top layer of enamel on my molars. It’s true—I haven’t put in my requisite three miles in days—but in case he failed to remember, I’ve been dealing with the necklace and infidelity and being tied to chairs.

  “As soon as you get to the end of that hall, I’ll pull her away again so you can get out,” Riker continues. “Under no circumstances will you leave that bin any earlier, understand?”

  Oh, I understand all right. There will be no overreacting to events beyond my comprehension. No trusting my own instincts to see me through. Never mind that the cleaning lady was my idea; when it comes to the details of the job, it’s Riker’s way or no way.

  “I mean it,” he adds firmly. “No matter what’s going on in there, you stay put. I don’t care if the necklace is sitting on the floor within your reach. Leave it there.”

  If it’s sitting on the floor within reach, then Grant and Tara are obviously not to be trusted with it for any length of time, but I don’t say so out loud. That’s not the point Riker is trying to make. The point is loud and clear and ringing in my ears.

  He doesn’t think I can do anything without him standing a few feet away, directing my every movement. He treats me the same way he always has—like a lost, wandering fifteen-year-old who can’t take a step without him.

  I’m suddenly exhausted by it—by all of it: walking a tightrope whenever he’s around, struggling to gain his approval, carrying the weight of my choices around my neck as some kind of penance I can remove only with his blessing. In many ways, Riker became my whole world when my dad disappeared, the only person I could rely on to stand by me when everyone else erased me from their memory.

  I love him for that, and I think a part of me always will. But I haven’t liked him—not in the way a friend should be liked—for a lot longer than is fair to either of us.

  “You know what?” I say. “No. I don’t agree to those terms.”

  He just looks at me. His right-side scowl is in place, but his eyes are more hurt than angry.

  “I’m going to head up there and make an assessment based on my experience and intelligence. I’m going to hide in a laundry basket to gather data, and then I’m going to use that data to make an informed decision about whether it’s safe for me to exit said basket.”

  He snorts. “Right. An informed decision.”

  “Jesus Christ, Riker. Can you even hear yourself right now?”

  “Yes. I have ears. I sound like a man who’s trying to help a friend. A friend who, I might add, doesn’t appreciate it in the slightest.”

  I know he’s hurting. I know he’s been through a lot these past few weeks. And I know he could easily start the car and drive away, leaving me to deal with this mess on my own. It’s a testament to his value as a human being that he doesn’t.

  But I’m hurting, too.

  “Do you know why I always choose Grant instead of you?” I ask. “Here’s a hint—it has nothing to do with the sex.”

  The angry red flush that covers his face isn’t much of an answer, but I run with it anyway. See, the problem with Riker and me is that we never moved past being angry kids together. Everything between us has been drama and angst, emotions left to simmer until they boil over. We never learned to interact as adults, and we never got to see each other grow up. We’ve been too busy running laps around this Neverland of our own making.

  “From the day I met him, Grant has treated me as an equal,” I say. “His equal. It doesn’t matter that he’s an FBI agent and I’m a thief. He doesn’t care that I lie and cheat and steal to get my way, because he’ll lie and cheat and steal right back. That’s what equals do.”

  Riker raises a hand as if to keep the words back. “He’s walking perfection. I get it. You don’t have to keep going.”

  But I do. Now that I’m going, I’m not sure I can stop. “I know it seems wrong, to think that an FBI agent could respect me, but he does—and that’s something you’ve never done, not even when I bail you out of debt or pull off incredible heists. He sees me as his enemy, yes, but an enemy worth engaging. An enemy worth his time and effort—an enemy he’ll tie to a chair to keep from getting in his way, because he believes in me enough to know I can.”

  “You want me to tie you up, Pen? Is that it?”

  In that moment, he probably would. But it wouldn’t be for the right reasons, as strange as that sounds. He wouldn’t tie me down to stop me from stealing a necklace or going up against him in battle—he would hold me down, keep me back, prevent me from growing enough to stop needing him the way he needs me.

  “I’ve always been a sad, scared little girl to you,” I say. “All alone in the world, able to steal anything you ask but without a lick of common sense.”

  That gets me a ghost of a smile, so thin it’s almost transparent. “You never did have any.”

  “I know.”

  “I was just trying to protect you.”

  I know that, too. “I appreciate what you’ve done for me over the years, Riker. I really do. There were times…”

  But I don’t need to tell him. He was there. He knows how many times he was the only thing keeping me alive.

  I soften. “At some point, we have to accept that we’re not kids anymore. We’re not fighting for survival, and it’s not us against the world. There’s nothing to protect me from anymore. You did it. You won. You saved me.”

  I’ve never said the words out loud before, and the truth in them causes my throat to tighten. Riker is—was—my salvation. That fact will always be the basis of our past, but it can’t be the basis of our future. That wouldn’t be fair to either of us.

  “You saved me,” I echo, quieter this time. “Now don’t you think it’s time we focus on saving you?”

  Riker doesn’t move. He continues looking in the distance, his attention concentrated across the street. But I know he registers my comment, because I hear him say, “And how do you suggest we do that?” in a low voice.

  I don’t have the answer, so it’s just as well that he nods toward the cleaning lady. “If we don’t move soon, we’re going to miss our window of opportunity,” he says. He takes a deep breath and faces me. “I hope you know what the hell you’re doing, Pen.”

  “I don’t,” I say truthfully. And that’s going to have to be good enough for us both.

  * * *

  After today, I’m going to have to add musty, used towels to my list of Unpleasant Smells to Be Trapped With. Based on the aesthetics of this particular motel, it doesn’t cater to a high-end crowd, and that fact shows in the linens forming my cocoon. The one underneath me is wet enough that it leaves a trail of drips behind the cart, while one wedged uncomfortably near my nasal passage seems to have been used to wash a skunk.

  But I’m in, and other than an, “Oy, this is getting heavy,” the cleaning woman hasn’t noticed an extra passenger on her journey.

  Based on my count of stops along the way, we should be approaching room 283 now, and I can feel the wheels bump over a crack in the sidewalk just outside the door. A knock and the sound of “housekeeping” send me into a deerlike state of immobility—which is just as well, because Grant’s rumbling voice is enough to set any woman running.

  “We don’t need any cleaning—” he begins before cutting himself off. Panicking, I wonder if he can see my
human-shaped lump inside this bag and plans to wheel me on a short path down a dark stairwell. Then I remember that he laughed outright at the idea of me hiding underneath our bathroom sink, and this is a much smaller space. “Actually, we could use a quick run-through,” he amends. “Come on in.”

  She hesitates before pushing the cart over the threshold. “I could come back later,” she says.

  Oh God. Is it because she’s facing a den of vice, a love nest among the bedbugs? Is the cleaning woman of one of the most squalid motels ever to grace a dirty street horrified by the depravity spread out before her?

  “You’re already here. We’ll do our best to stay out of your way.”

  “What’s that?” Tara’s voice sounds over what must be a blow-dryer.

  So. Showering has happened in some form or another. That’s not troublesome. Not troublesome at all.

  “Housekeeping is here,” Grant says.

  “Oh, good. We need more towels.”

  The cart rattles as I presume the cleaning lady hands a stack of fresh towels to my stepmother. I really hope Tara’s wearing more than one at the moment. I bet she looks fantastic in a towel.

  “How can you possibly need more?” Grant asks. “They stocked the bathroom with twelve.”

  “Um…I just took a shower?”

  “And you used all twelve?”

  “I used my half of the twelve, yes. So now I need more.”

  Grant’s grunt of irritation penetrates my canvas walls. Since his mom is a nurse, he has this thing about putting an additional burden on women who spend all day working on their feet. “Can’t you just hang them up and let them dry? We won’t be here much longer.”

  “That’s what you think. I warned you how it would be. You can’t expect these guys to trust you immediately. This situation has ‘sting’ written all over it.” A pause. “You know, you could just give it to me and let me handle the transaction for you.”

  “No.”

  “I’m sure Blackrock won’t object to seeing me alone.”

  “No.”

  “I’m not going to take it!” Tara insists. “I want to find out where Warren hid that money just as much as you do.”