“I want Creek—”
Chapter 2
“What is it baby?”
I blink several times, bewildered.
Creek’s warm hands are around my cheeks, cradling my face. His thumbs gently stroke my skin as though I’m a lost little girl. “You were calling my name,” he says. “Loudly.”
The intense blue of his worried eyes soothes me after my red hot nightmare. They’re the kind of icy beautiful that can knock you from your senses for a moment and erase all thought.
I shake my head, still foggy. “I-I must have had a bad dream.”
Creek’s concern only deepens. “But your eyes were open, Robin.” He gazes at the ruby heart in my hands as if it might have germs. “You sure you’re okay?”
“Yeah, of course.” I try to make light of it, even though I’m completely perplexed. I toss the ruby into the front pocket of my backpack like a hot potato. “I ate so much greasy Skyline Chili back in Cinci before we left, it’s a wonder I didn’t hallucinate about Oompa Loompas.”
I smile a little. Though Creek lets his hands fall from my face, I can tell he isn’t fooled. I’m not about to admit to him that I actually tasted his blood on a bizarre whim. Is that the reason for my strange daytrip?
A cloud bank engulfs our airplane, surrounding us in a white haze like the weird vapor I’d become in my vision, and it gives me shivers. For some reason it feels as if we’ve rolled into infinity, where time doesn’t obey the same rules anymore—and I feel like my whole identity on this plane is up for grabs. I know I’ve gone from Robin McArthur to Robin McCracken to Rubina De Bargona in the span of only three short months. And yeah, maybe that’s traumatic. But this seems deeper, like something at a soul level has shifted. I don’t know why, but I feel older now, and a whole lot more world weary than my 16 years.
Peering at my backpack, I spot the wooden bluebird that Granny Tinker had whittled for me as a gift before I left the trailer park, and I pluck it from a side pocket for comfort the way a child reaches for a stuffed toy. Stroking its carefully carved wings, I notice it doesn’t look like the usual bluebirds that hung around Turtle Shores. It’s shaped more like a hawk, and she stained its claws bright red. A bit odd, but then there’s no deciphering Granny Tinker’s strange web of superstitions. When I cradle the bird in my palm, I can feel it has a little trap door on its belly with a tiny hinge that I hadn’t noticed before. Pushing it open with my finger, a slip of paper drops out. I unfurl it and read the inscription in Granny Tinker’s awkward hand.
April 1, 1996 Queen of the Gypsies
I done told ya yer soul was marked.
Beware of threes.
Immediately, my forehead grows hot.
That date is my birthday—
But it’s two years older than when my daddy told me I was born.
Oh God.
Could Granny Tinker be trying to expose another one of my dad’s lies?
It would explain why I always did better than the other kids at school, without hardly studying. And why I was the first of my girlfriends to reach my full height and get my period in only the 5th grade—not to mention a training bra by then. But why now? Why did Granny Tinker bother to tell me this for my trip, and what the hell does she mean by Queen of the Gypsies?
“Creek,” I blurt angrily. “How old are you? Really? And don’t you dare lie to me—”
Creek squints his eyes, in that cool way he always used to do before sizing up any threats at one of our bank jobs. His face muscles tighten, strong jaw working slowly over molars. He’s not one to give up information easily, but I believe he trusts me. Then again, he’s never told me his full name, age, where he was born, who is father was—nothing. His jaw shifts a little and his eyes search mine, as though weighing the risk to me if I know too much about him. Then his gaze travels over the dried smear of blood that stains his arm.
“You told me we were partners,” I remind him. “It says so on your arm.” I swallow hard, going for the kill now. “You also told me you love me.”
Creek’s eyes lock on mine.
God, he can be cold!
I hardly know who Creek is sometimes. He’s like a dark continent that’s been only partially mapped, because no one’s ever been brave enough to try and enter that deep interior.
I draw a breath, my heart lurching a beat.
Except me.
I’m that brave and he damn well knows it. I’ve proven it on bank jobs, and I wonder if this is a make or break time for us. Raising my chin, I stare him down. I don’t give a shit if there’s things about his life he doesn’t want to reveal. He knows everything about me—as much as I do, anyway—and I’m gonna make damn sure this relationship stays a two-way street.
And that’s when I see a sly smile toy at Creek’s lips. The jagged scar on his cheek crinkles into a straight line, like a dagger, which always manages to pierce my heart.
This is exactly why he loves me, and I know it.
Creek surprises me with a kiss, his lips tender and moist and so thoroughly absorbed, it’s as if he could inhale me right now. My hands instinctively seek out his chest, roaming over the contours of his hard muscles. Our breaths sync, chests rising as one. I feel his warm palm slip behind my neck and finger a cowlick, stroking so softly I could purr. He cradles my head like I’m precious to him. I guess this is our relationship in a nutshell. I’m the only one who stands up to Creek’s ice, and he’s the only one who can practically drown me in his hotness, making everything else fall away . . .
Oh yeah, and he’d kill anybody who tries to mess with me.
When he breaks from our kiss, without a word, Creek pulls a passport from his back pocket and tosses it onto my lap.
I open it up. It reads, John Corrigan, May 3, 1996. Today is only May 1st, so he’s still 17 years old?
I whip out my passport too, feeling flustered that I hadn’t checked it out yet. It states, Lisa Harris, April 1, 1998. That means 16 years old.
“But these are fake,” I remind him, glancing at the phony names, although the birthday is what I used to think was correct for me. Creek said he’d gotten the passports from one of his backwoods underworld connections, the same guys who fenced my stolen car when we discovered it had a tracer. Sucking up my courage, I show him the snippet of paper from Granny Tinker’s bluebird, and watch his eyes grow wide.
So Creek didn’t know I’m 18 either!
His Adam’s apple chases up and down his throat.
“Granny would never lie to you,” he concedes.
And I know it’s the truth. If anything, she specializes in telling you what you don’t want to hear in an infinite number of spooky ways. I curse under my breath. I don’t know what makes me madder, the fact that my dad duped me yet again, or the fact that I could have had sex with Creek by now without a shred of guilt.
But wait a minute—Creek was born in May? He’s a month younger than I am at 17?
I can’t resist elbowing him. “So how does it feel to be jailbait, partner?”
Creek’s frigid stare is a swift reminder of just how old his soul really is—one part lethal and another part forever untamed. It’s moments like this that scare me to the bone, and I have to wonder about what went on in his childhood that splintered his heart into such razor-edged pieces. Still, Creek didn’t learn to respect me because I back down easily, and I’m not going to wimp out now.
Feeling cold, I wrap a thin Delta blanket around me and curl myself as best I can into the airplane seat, then boldly rest my head on Creek’s shoulder to keep up the pretense that he never rattles me.
“Sweet dreams—John,” I say with a smirk, hoping to make him lighten up. I feel indescribably tired, and I need to get more sleep before we arrive in Venice tonight. “What a shame you’re a minor and you can’t buy alcohol in Italy.”
As I let my eyes fall closed, Creek gives my nose a tweak.
“Based on your passport, you can’t either—Lisa.”
I laugh a little at myself and cudd
le up against him, heaving a sigh. “Oh well, guess that means we’ll have to do what we always do.”
“Which is . . .” replies Creek.
“Steal it.”
Chapter 3
Creek’s sinewy arms are wrapped around me, softened by his flannel overshirt, as my eyes flutter open from a hard sleep. There’s nothing I want more right now than to linger in his embrace forever. The firmness of his chest feels like home to me—a haven I’ve never really had before. But when a moist breeze begins to caress my cheeks, fragrant with the exotic scent of jasmine and bougainvillea, I perk up and glance around. What I see before me rises straight out of a dream. An indigo lagoon stretches to an open sea, with the glow of street lights shimmering in its waters and narrow boats swaying at its edges like delicate slippers. Blinking several times, I sit up straight and gasp. The majestic silhouettes of Old World buildings on either side of the canal make me feel as if we’ve entered a fairy tale . . .
“Something tells me we aren’t in O-Ohio anymore,” I mutter breathlessly.
Creek’s warm lips nuzzle against my neck.
“Congratulations, baby—this is Venice,” he whispers. “The world your family really comes from.”
I shudder, feeling as if he’d just placed a gold crown upon my head.
But then I remember that I’m illegitimate—and pretty much the last person on earth the de Bargonas want to meet.
“W-where do we go from here?” I ask Creek. It’s not like we’d had time to plan an itinerary for this trip.
“Bridge of Sighs,” breaks in a man with a thick Italian accent I hadn’t noticed before.
Whipping around, I see a portly, bearded guy behind us with a gold gypsy ring in his ear bearing a long oar that he stirs into the water from our gondola. Gondola? It’s then that I vaguely recall getting off the airplane and onto a train that shuttled us here. I must have fallen asleep again—so Creek carried me onto this boat? I search Creek’s eyes. He merely gives me a wink.
“Ponte del Sospire,” our gondolier insists, turning our boat to the left and pointing at a small bridge over a canal. Its pale stones reflect a golden hue from the setting sun that’s a little eerie highlighted against the deep azure of the twilight-colored water. “This bridge is both the beginning and the end for Venezia.”
“What do you mean?” I ask.
He digs in his oar and swivels our boat, where we see the last fiery swaths of gold and crimson streak across the sky at sunset.
“Now we wait,” he says with a smile.
The tide gently swells and subsides, tossing our boat a little, and then soft bells begin to echo across the water.
“La campanile de San Marco,” our gondolier nods. “Legend has it that if you kiss your beloved as the sun goes down to the ringing of the bells, your love will last forever.”
Creek doesn’t miss his chance.
He sweeps me up in a luscious kiss before the bells cease, his fingers gripping my jaw like he means it. His skin still smells musky and wild, like the brambly forest around Bender Lake where we met, tinged with the sharpness of smoke and something else—something as mysterious and raw as one of Granny Tinker’s magic candles. As the bells of San Marco begin to fade, his lips break away and he tilts his forehead against mine. I can feel his warm breath stroke my cheeks. And those eyes—as stunning as a glacier and just as forbidding sometimes. But right now, their cool depths look into mine as if I might open the way to his idea of eternity. With one last stolen kiss, he smiles and turns to gaze at the sunset that takes both our breaths away.
“Here we are at crossroads,” our gondolier says. “The Bridge of Sighs either brings eternal love,” he points to the open sea, and then back to the city of Venice, “or was the last stop for prisoners before jail. Which one do you choose?” He looks at me in a manner that makes me nervous. “Either way,” he continues, “you are bound to sigh. Love and loss—they are destiny.”
The gondolier gazes at me knowingly. I realize this sounds coo-coo, but I can’t help wondering if he knows I’m a thief—that Creek and I are both thieves—and we could easily belong to either future. The thought makes me uneasy, and I change the subject.
“Do you, um, know any places we can stay in the area?”
The gondolier remains quiet, sizing me up. Finally, he nods his head.
“You want to pay a fortune,” he says, gesturing at a palatial, tangerine building to our left that’s so elegant, it’s beyond my wildest dreams. “You knock on the door of Hotel Danieli.” I see a smile play at his lips. “But if you want to feel at home, you go to my family’s bed and breakfast on the island of Burano. They feed you well.”
“Danieli,” Creek pipes up. I know he doesn’t give a damn about creature comforts. It’s anonymity he’s after—the gondolier’s wife might remember our faces.
“Very well,” our gondolier sighs, staring at the bridge up ahead. He rows us to a platform and expertly parks our boat parallel to the walkway. “Ciao, my lovers.”
Creek pays him handsomely from the wad of cash in his backpack that he brought on this trip. And no sooner do we step off the gondola onto dry land than we’re accosted by a gypsy woman selling flowers.
“Fiore!” she shouts aggressively, shoving her blooms at us with a gap-toothed smile. “Bella fiore! Euro—pound—dollar!”
I sneeze at the bouquet of wildflowers she stuffed into my face. I vaguely recall being warned before leaving our train to watch out for gypsy vendors who haunt the shadows of Venice, specializing in distraction while they pick your pockets. Swiftly, I take off my backpack and remove the ruby heart and slip it into the front pocket of my jeans, where it will be harder to snatch. Just then, the gypsy woman drops her bouquet to the ground. The colorful petals scatter across the sidewalk like confetti.
“No . . .” she gasps, barely above a whisper.
She studies my face as though reading my aura and mutters something in what I guess to be her gypsy tongue. At the sound of her lilting voice, I swear the ruby heart in my pocket begins to grow warm and throbs.
“Thagarni?” the gypsy woman asks, her body visibly shaking. She eyes me warily as if she’d seen a ghost. Before I know it, she’s fallen to her knees and is pulling out coins from her skirt pocket and arranging them in a peculiar star pattern at my feet. They shine under the streetlamp like burnished gold.
“What the hell are you doing?” I protest, flabbergasted. “I can’t take your money—”
Undaunted, the woman mumbles a phrase over and over that I don’t understand like a series of Hail Mary’s. Her tone is peculiar, as though she’s petitioning for something. All at once, I hear a loud pop. A streak of fire rips through my hair and grazes across the side of my head like the fingers of a warm lover—
“Robin, get down!” Creek orders.
He pulls me to street level so fast that my cheek meets the cobblestones with a hard thud and sends shockwaves through my brain. Dragging me by the shoulders across the street with lightning speed, Creek covers me and becomes a blur as I scramble to find my feet and keep up with him. My lungs are on fire and my heart is hammering so fast I fear it will explode. With the strategic swiftness of a seasoned criminal, Creek locates a dark alley and throws my body against a wall in shadows.
“Keep your head down!” he commands as I hear another bullet whistle by.
It’s then that I realize what we’re really up against—someone is deliberately shooting at us. As in, they want us dead.
And Creek doesn’t cower for a second.
He leaps like a phantom from our dark alley corner and jumps the man stupid enough to peek his head into the entryway with a gun in his hand. The two become one writhing creature on the ground until I see Creek manage to rise on top and pin the man down. Their hands struggle fiercely for control of the man’s gun.
“Creek!” I cry, horrified at what I’m witnessing. Within seconds, Creek has the man’s pistol and aims it straight at his forehead. His instant finesse at handling t
his weapon shocks me—obviously, this isn’t his first gunfight. I can hear the cold metal sound the pistol makes as he cocks the trigger, punctuated by the man’s panicked breaths.
In a slim shaft of light from a nearby streetlamp, I see the thug gazing at Creek as if he’s God. The veins at his temple bulge at the surface of his skin, appearing ready to burst.
“Who do you work for!” Creek demands, giving him a shake.
The man squeezes his eyes tight and seals his lips into a thin line, offering up no information. He trembles wildly as though prepared to meet his Maker. A shrill whistle blows, and I hear shouts that sound like Italian police.
“Creek, the police are coming—they’ll help!” I insist, not wanting to see blood splattered all over us at Creek’s doing.
“No!” Creek replies, and to my utter astonishment, he lets the thug go.
In a fleeting second, they guy scrambles from beneath Creek and makes a mad dash into the shadows of the alleyway, stumbling several times but then vanishing like a greased rat. With a flick of his wrist, Creek throws the pistol into a dark crevice between crumbling buildings that’s pooled with a foot of tidewater. Then he grabs me and yanks me to my feet, swallowing me in a kiss so forceful I fear I’m about to be devoured.
At that moment, two policemen appear in the alleyway. They shine blinding flashlights at us—a couple of lip-locked lovers who now look like any ordinary tourists out for a romantic stroll in the city of Venice. Nothing unusual . . .
“Contiuare!” One policeman barks to the other in a huff.
As Creek’s hand rises to my breasts like a half-starved lover, the beams of their flashlights flit across the alley. Then their lights scan a series of criss-cross lines through the darkness and slowly disappear.
Chapter 4
We gaze up at the night sky.
Creek’s arm is raised in the dark and he’s fingering the rim of a constellation, tracing the twinkling spires of a star . . .
Stone of Thieves (Robbin' Hearts Series Book 2) Page 2