Hot Pursuit (To Catch a Thief Book 1)

by Kay Marie

  “Oh, that’s wonderful,” she gushed, voice animated. And then she paused. He could hear her hesitation through the phone. It made his shoulders writhe uncomfortably. “Just…don’t work your life away, Nathaniel.”

  “Mom—”

  “No, I know,” she interrupted, as though needing to get everything out quickly, just to make sure she actually said it. “I used to have the same argument with your father. You’re doing important things, sweetie—I understand that. I just don’t want you to wake up one day and wonder what happened with your life. Where the time went. What it all meant. There are other jobs, even ones within the bureau itself. Less dangerous ones. Less time-consuming ones. Just think about it, okay?”

  Nate lifted his fingers and squeezed the bridge of his nose. “Okay, Mom.”

  “I love you, Nathaniel.”

  “Love you too.”

  He dropped his hand into his lap and hung up, suddenly drained. Taking a deep breath, he leaned back, closing his eyes, trying to halt the tight bundle of stress beginning to knot its way across his insides.

  It always came down to the same argument in the end.

  Which was why he didn’t call his mother.

  Because he couldn’t stop. Not now.

  Not when he was so close to justice.

  If I can get to Jo.

  If I can make her see.

  Make her understand.

  A tingle tickled the back of his neck.

  Two hands came over his eyes.

  Nate acted instinctually, too many self-defense lessons drilled into his psyche for his mind to catch up with his muscle memory. One second he was on the bench, and the next he was on his feet with his fingers wrapped around two petite wrists, twisting them into a pretzel as he flipped around. He stopped short of lifting a knee as the auburn hair and feminine body finally registered. Instead, his arms jerked forward, and Jo slammed full-force into the center of his chest, her eyes wide as she stared up at his face, which was now a mere matter of inches away.

  “Jo!”

  “Morning,” she said slowly, mirth evident in the buoyant tone.

  He didn’t move. He was too caught up in the feel of her thighs pressed against his thighs, the way her body fit like a glove against his, how she was the perfect height. She bit the side of her lower lip, drawing his attention to the plush softness of her mouth. If he leaned his head down, one, maybe two inches, he could finally do what he’d wanted to do ever since he saw her cruising toward him on that jet ski, her caution lost to the wind.

  “You going to let me go, Agent Parker?” A smile spread across her bright-red lips as she wriggled in his arms, rubbing up against him in all the right—I mean, wrong—places. “Not that I’m complaining. But I brought coffee.”

  Nate released her hands immediately and stepped back. The warm spring air felt like ice compared to the heat of her body—a much-needed cold shower. He resisted the urge to shake his head clear of the elixir that was Jolene Carter.

  “Guess I should’ve known better than to sneak up on a Fed,” she murmured as she knelt, reaching for two paper cups on the ground. “Though a little manhandling in the right situation can be fun. Coffee?”

  Nate furrowed his brows, still stuck on that manhandling bit. A vivid image snaked into the forefront of his thoughts—Jo, pressed against a wall, his lips trailing a burning path down the side of her neck as he held her hands above her head, captive.

  He did shake his head that time.

  Get it together, Parker!

  “Huh?” he muttered.

  “Coffee?” she repeated, offering him a cup. A suspicious twinkle sparkled in the corner of her eye. “I figured you take yours black. Just a hunch.”

  “Yeah…” He accepted the coffee, being careful not to let their fingers linger. “Thanks.”

  Jo stepped around him and sat down. He tried not to notice the way the sun gleamed off her smooth skin as she crossed her legs in those short-shorts…tried and failed. Nate took the spot next to her, just to have somewhere else to look, like the dirty city street. Same thing.

  Not.

  “So, who were you talking to?” Jo asked as she studied his profile, taking her time, tracing every contour with her eyes. “Girlfriend?”

  Nate almost choked on his coffee.

  “Hot…” He coughed and pounded a fist to his chest. “And no, just my mom.”

  “What a charmer,” she commented smoothly. “Good with his hands and remembers to call his mom.”

  Nate frowned, glancing at Jo. Was she being more forward than usual? Well…sending him a photo of herself in lingerie was about as forward as it got. But something about her tone seemed more goading, more personal. “What’s going on here?”

  “Just returning the breakfast favor,” she said with a shrug, tugging a brown bag from her purse and handing him a bagel. “From a place around the corner.”

  He eyed it curiously. “You eat things that don’t have sugar?”

  “I eat things that have walnut raisin cream cheese,” she replied in a sing-song voice and then rolled her eyes. “Don’t worry, Nate. I got yours with plain.”

  Jo took a massive bite, giving herself chipmunk cheeks in the process. Not very ladylike, though for some reason he found it incredibly endearing.

  He followed suit.

  Delicious.

  “What did you and your mom talk about?” Jo asked, seemingly casual, though there was a wistful edge to her voice, one he understood completely.

  “My brother, my sister,” he said, unable to stop himself from adding, “how she thinks I’m wasting my life. The usual.”

  “Wasting your life?” Jo’s face twisted. “But you’re a federal agent. Wasting your life would be like, I don’t know, running off to join the circus. Or well, I don’t know, because if you were an acrobat that would be a totally plausible profession, but you know what I mean.”

  I shouldn’t have said anything… Though to be honest, it was nice to vent for once. “She wants me to settle down. Do something a little less dangerous with my life.”

  “Ahh.” Jo’s brows lifted with understanding, but then the edges of her lips curved behind her coffee cup. “Well, I do have a mean right hook.”

  “Too bad your reflexes suck.”

  The jibe slipped out before he could stop it.

  Jo straightened her spine and scoffed, turning to him indignantly. “I could’ve knocked you on your ass if I’d wanted to, Nate. I just chose not to.”

  His brows rose of their own accord. “Oh, I’m sure that’s exactly what happened.”

  “Careful with that tone, Parker,” Jo grumbled. “You know I’m not afraid to take a dare when presented.”

  “One punch,” Nate commented, calling her bluff. He turned, meeting her stare head-on. “I dare you.”

  Her nose wrinkled adorably with unmasked fury.

  Lucky for him, Jo was easier to read than a book. Her chest puffed with a deep breath. Her weight shifted. Her hand balled into a fist. Her elbow ticked back just enough. When the punch came, Nate simply lifted his palm and caught her hand midflight, stopping her in her tracks. Bright flames sparked to life in the centers of her eyes, golden glitter burning with unabashed desire. A blink and the fire was gone.

  “You were saying…?” Nate drawled, not letting go of her hand as he lifted his coffee cup to take another sip, balancing his bagel on his lap.

  She tugged once or twice against his hold, then sighed in what sounded suspiciously like surrender. “So, your mom thinks you should settle down?”

  Nate released her immediately.

  We’re back to this? “I will eventually.”

  “Ahh.” Jo smirked and lifted her coffee to her lips. “The universal male response.”

  “No, no, I mean it.” And he did. He really did. “There are just some things I need to accomplish first.”

  “Things like what?” Jo asked, covering her half-full mouth with her hand.

  Things involving you.


  Nate’s gaze slid in her direction. She narrowed her eyes as though she could see the answer written across his irises. He let her, not bothering to look away. Because she didn’t know it yet, but Jo was his ticket to closure, to justice. She was the key to everything he’d worked so hard to achieve, the break he’d been waiting nearly twenty years to finally receive.

  The phone in his pocket buzzed.

  Nate and Jo jolted apart.

  He slid his cell out and read the message across the screen. It was from the boss.

  Deal is a go. Working on official court approval, should have it by sundown. You’re free to approach Carter with the terms.

  Nate looked up.

  Jo carefully studied her bagel, searching for the perfect bite.

  You’re mine, Jolene Carter.

  The thought cut through his mind like a promise. The gala was in less than twelve hours. Her flight back to the Bahamas was in less than twenty-four. Which meant he had hardly any time at all to figure out how to make the impossible happen—how to get her to turn on her father and her best friend. Luckily, he had a plan. A risky one. But one he felt in his bones would work.

  Tonight, Jo, you’re mine.

  - 17 -

  Jo

  A hungry gleam filled Nate’s gaze, and it wasn’t aching for the half-eaten bagel on his lap. He wanted something else, something his eyes whispered only she could possibly provide, something that made a molten stream of heat course through her blood, starting deep in her belly, spreading all the way to her toes, bringing a blush to her cheeks—one she tried to hide behind her coffee cup.

  Stick to the plan.

  The plan. Right—the plan.

  Seduce Nate.

  Get invited back to his room.

  Finally figure out what those hands could do besides stop a girl midpunch.

  Break into his computer.

  Steal whatever information he had on her father.

  And then bail.

  Back to business. Back to Thad. Back to the operation she came to New York for. Her dalliance with Nate would be a side-play, maybe a distraction enough to throw him off the bigger scheme of the night.

  Easy. Simple.

  A little something for everyone to enjoy.

  Jo flicked her gaze to those blue, blue eyes laser focused on her. They burned with a heat even fiercer than the one coming from the sun above their heads. She swallowed.

  Yeah…easy.

  Except, for the first time, she wasn’t quite sure who was doing the seducing here. Was Nate falling into her trap? Or was she tumbling headfirst into his?

  “Who was that?” she asked, gazing pointedly toward his cell, mildly curious, but more needing to fill the silence.

  Nate shrugged and slipped the phone back into his pocket. “No one important.”

  I don’t believe that for one second.

  But she bit her tongue.

  “So, did you find Ryder yesterday? After I left?”

  The question was so casual she almost didn’t realize at first that he was talking about Thad. Jo rarely used his last name—he was just Thad. Thaddy Bear on occasion. But never Thaddeus Ryder. Too formal. And she didn’t like to remember that for all their history, he wasn’t truly a brother, by name or by blood.

  She swallowed her bite. “No talk of Thad, remember?”

  “Those were yesterday’s rules,” Nate said calmly.

  Her eyebrows scrunched. What was he trying to do? They’d found a balance, a careful one. Why was he trying to ruin it? “So…?”

  “So today, I don’t have the time or the luxury of following them.” Nate’s tone was almost comically even, so completely different from the gravity of the words he offered.

  Jo turned to him, shifting her weight on the bench. “What does that mean?”

  “It means”—Nate met and held her gaze, probing—“did he tell you who was following us yesterday?”

  Jo looked to the ground and studied the cracks in the pavement by their feet. Lying made her uncomfortable when it was with someone who mattered. The fact that her skin currently crawled was more telling than any other reaction she’d ever had in Nate’s presence. Because it meant she cared, a lot more than she wanted to. “He didn’t know.”

  Nate snorted. “Sure he didn’t.”

  “I trust him.” That, at least, was the truth.

  “Oh, you trust him?” Nate murmured, voice heavy with disbelief. “You don’t think he’s ever lied to you?”

  “Not about anything important.”

  “Where do you think he and your father were last week?” Nate asked, innocent enough.

  But still, her chest pulled tight. “Florida. Meeting with some…friends.”

  “Wrong,” Nate countered. “They were in Cuba.”

  Cuba?

  Why Cuba?

  Why not be honest?

  She shook her head, dispelling the questions.

  “So what?” Jo turned on him, practically spitting the words. Who was this Nate? And what happened to the sweet, gentle, kind man from yesterday? The one who looked at her as though he understood all the messy pain inside her heart? This Nate was mean and a bit of a jerk, and she was about one question away from ditching her plan altogether and calling it a day. “I hardly think that makes a big difference.”

  “Okay, how’s this one for you?” Nate answered, voice fueled with challenge. “Why did Ryder drop out of college? Maybe that one’s a little more important.”

  “He…” Jo trailed off, trying to read where this was going, to anticipate the surprise Nate was trying to pull. But what could Nate possibly know that she didn’t? Why would Thad have lied about this? To her? “His dad died the summer before his senior year, and he went back to school, and I thought he was doing great, but he came home one day and said he couldn’t do it anymore. That the things he used to think were important, didn’t matter. He didn’t want to be so far away from me, from my father. He didn’t want to be so alone. And I understood, in a way, how losing someone like that could make his priorities shift.”

  Nate pressed his lips together and nodded, considering her answer.

  Jo stared at him through the corner of her eye.

  He kept his gaze straight ahead, lifting his coffee cup, quietly murmuring, “Your dad said he was going to retire that summer, didn’t he? Said it wasn’t the same without his partner around?”

  How the hell do you know that? Jo shrugged, sidestepping the question. Any verbal answer she gave could be used against her father, against her.

  “And you never questioned what happened? To change your dad’s mind? To change Ryder’s? Two big shifts, at the exact same time, right before they started working together?”

  “Nope,” Jo stated, letting the P really pop. Yet in the back of her mind, the wheels spun. No, I never questioned it. Because my dad told me he was going to retire all the time, and he never did. Part of her still didn’t believe it now, despite the promises that this job would be his last, their last, the end. Why would she have dared to hope back then? I was just so happy to have Thad home, so lonely without him, so jealous he was in school when I’d already dropped out to help my father, I didn’t question it. I didn’t question anything, ever. It was easier to go with the flow, to pretend. She’d half convinced herself they were vigilante art crusaders rather than criminals, but what alternative did she have? They were her family. They were the only two people she had left in the world.

  “So, Ryder never told you who visited him at campus the day before he packed his things and left?”

  What the fuck?!

  No!

  Jo shrugged again, but her throat was tight, and her stomach was in knots. She tried to keep a straight face, tried to keep Nate from noticing the terrified buzz growing thunderous beneath her skin.

  “He never mentioned any conversation, any threat, that maybe prompted a shift in priorities?”

  Jo sat stock still.

  “And your dad? I have some credit card receipts that i
ndicate he was off the island around the same time? Did he tell you who he met with while he was gone?”

  No.

  And I never asked. Because whenever I was left alone on the island, I could forget why I lived there and what my father was doing and I could just be…me. I watched the Food Network, spent hours in the kitchen, sat on the beach with a notebook dreaming up recipes, and did my best to forget. Like I’m going to do right now.

  Jo stood abruptly, done with this conversation.

  Nate wrapped his fingers around her wrist, firm enough to stop her, but not enough to hurt. “Jo, wait.”

  “Why?” She whirled around, raising her voice, unable to stop it, unable to hide how much this conversation was affecting her. “Why should I stay and listen to you? What are you even trying to do?”

  “I’m trying to force you to ask yourself the questions you’ve been running from for your entire life.” He loosened his hold, but Jo didn’t walk away. The ire in his gaze had turned to concern, to caring. For some reason, that hurt worse. Yet her feet were stuck to the ground, trapped, as Nate shifted his hold, sliding his palm down her hand, lacing his fingers through hers and squeezing in a different way, a way that made her heart burn. “I’m trying to get you to see that you’ve been lied to for years, by the people you’re risking your freedom to protect. I’m trying to tell you that there could be another way, another life, a better life…for you.”

  “Stop.” Jo lifted her other hand and pressed her finger to his mouth.

  “Why?” he asked, soft lips moving against her skin, almost like a kiss, yet so incredibly different. She dropped her hand away.

  “Because I know what you’re going to say,” Jo murmured, staring at his chest, not able to lift her gaze that foot higher and look him in the eyes. I know what you’re going to say. You’re going to offer me all my dreams on a silver platter in one hand and the knife to stab my own father in the back in the other. And I told Thad I could handle it, but if I hear it out loud…I’m not sure what I’ll do. “I know, Nate. And my answer is no.”

  “Jo,” he pleaded softly. “They’re lying to you.”