But this was Nick. The man she worked with and for. Despite the aura of danger that crackled around him like summer lightning, he'd back off if she put up a fight. She was almost sure of it.
By the time her conscious mind had reasoned that out, the pleasure centers in her brain had begun shooting out traitorous little synapses. The urge to relax her lips, to open her mouth under his, jumped from nerve to nerve like a live spark.
Nick, damn him, played to her body, not her mind. As if sensing the electricity racing through her, he slanted his mouth over hers. The hold on her wrists loosened. The arm curved around her waist tightened.
They were molded together, hip to hip, chest to chest. Her breasts were mashed flat. Her pelvis rocked against his. Through the thin silk of her nightgown, Mackenzie felt him harden and press against her stomach. The muscles low in her belly spasmed in instinctive response even as alarms clanged like crazy in her head.
Whoa! Time to end things, right here, right now. While she still could.
To her profound annoyance, Nick beat her to the draw. Breaking off the kiss, he raised his head and frowned down at her. Listening to his breath rasp out as fast and rough as hers gave Mackenzie a perverse and very intense satisfaction. Smooth, sure, in-control Nick Jensen had come as close to losing it as she had.
"Are we even now?" she asked pointedly.
"We're getting there."
"Then how about you let me up?"
The crease between his sun-bleached brows disappeared. Right before her eyes, the Nick she knew reemerged. Seemingly more amused than annoyed.
"Am I going to have to fight you for the Taser when I do?"
"We'll decide that when I'm on my feet."
With a nod, he disengaged. If he felt any lingering discomfort—above or below his belt—it didn't show in his lithe movements. When he reached down a hand to help her up, Mackenzie decided it would be undignified at this point to swat it away. Scrambling to her feet, she twitched her pale silver gown into place.
‘‘Okay, Nick, the fun and games are over. Where did you go tonight?"
"To Cannes, to visit an old business associate."
"And you didn't tell me because?"
"One, I wasn't sure the trip would produce anything significant. Two..."
"Yes?"
He raked a hand through the tawny gold of his hair. "Two, I wasn't ready to explain how I knew this particular associate."
Curiosity spiked into Mackenzie, layering on top of the chaotic sensations the man had already roused. Evidently she was about to learn something about Lightning's past.
"Why don't you call room service and order up a pot of coffee while I get changed?" she suggested. "This doesn't sound like the kind of conversation we should conduct while one of us is wearing a nightgown."
"Not that nightgown," Nick agreed, his voice laced with genuine regret.
The moment she closed her bedroom door, Mackenzie collapsed against it.
For all her seemingly quick recovery out there in the sitting room, she needed time to get her runaway pulse back under control. Not to mention douse the fire still raging throughout her body.
In retrospect she had to admit zapping Nick with the Taser hadn't been such a good idea. She'd intended to make a very succinct, very dramatic point. She'd accomplished that.
So had he.
Gulping, she drew her tongue along her lower lip. She could still taste him. Still feel him. Not just on her lips. Her breasts tingled from their contact with his chest, and the tight little ache low in her belly refused to go away. All she had to do was remember Nick rock-hard against her and the ache intensified to a hot, pulsing need.
Dammit! She'd known she wasn't in Nick Jensen's league, but she hadn't realized just how far out of it she was. One taste of his mouth on hers, one press of his hips against her thighs, and she'd almost forgotten the hard-learned lessons from her marriage.
She should have been the one to break off the kiss. She should have dredged up a superior smile and that thoroughly annoying glint of amusement. She should have rolled to her feet and helped him up instead of lying in a puddle of want at his feet.
That wouldn't happen again! If and when she and Nick tangled again, she'd make sure she came out on top.
Groaning at the erotic and wholly inappropriate image that flashed into her head, Mackenzie shoved away from the door and marched to the massive armoire where she'd hung her new wardrobe. After a quick review of the selections, she pulled on a pair of tan linen slacks and a cropped navy blue sweater with a nautical design in white and gold.
Three hours, two pots of coffee and six scanned ledgers later, Mackenzie reviewed the list she'd compiled on her laptop computer. Her lips rounding in a soundless whistle, she turned to the man sprawled comfortably on the elegant Empire sofa.
"You really stole all this stuff?"
"That and more. Gireaux only annotated the items he considered high-value in his secret set of books. There's no telling how many Timexes, Kodak Instamatics and fake tennis bracelets I lifted that didn't warrant an entry in the ledgers."
Nick Jensen, a thief. Mackenzie was having trouble making the mental adjustment.
"How long were you on the streets?" she asked curiously.
"I'm not sure. I must have been about four or five when Gireaux caught me filching fruit from a market stall and took me under his wing. I'd been living on what I could steal for some time before that."
"What happened to your parents?"
His shoulders lifted in a careless shrug. "I don't have any idea who my father was. Neither, I'm told, did my mother. She sold herself to buy cocaine and OD'ed when she was eighteen or nineteen."
"Good Lord!"
"Feeling sorry for me?" he asked with a smile. "Don't. Paige and Doc Jensen were the best parents any kid could ever hope for. They more than made up for the holes in my early years—not that I felt particularly deprived at the time." His smile widened. "I was an enterprising little runt. As you can see from that list, I usually took in a pretty good haul."
With some effort, Mackenzie wrenched her mind away from this fascinating glimpse into Nick's past.
"Do you really think there's a connection between the attack in D.C. and this Jacques Gireaux?"
"I'd say the interval between his murder and the attack on us was too close to be mere coincidence. My bet is that whoever broke into his shop found something that linked him to me. I just haven't established what that link is yet."
‘‘I guess this list is as good a place to start looking as any," Mackenzie murmured, scrolling down the entries she'd transferred from the ledgers to her laptop. ‘‘The jewelry and watches are no problem. I can bounce them against the International Jewelers' Database and retrieve information on items by ID number, purchase date, owner or vendor. If I cross-check that with various insurance claims databases, we can see who filed claims on which pieces. Ditto the cameras and the laptop. But this stuff..."
She highlighted several items with the pointer.
"Two sets, deep-sea fishing rods and reels. One each, ladies beaded evening bag, butterfly shape. A porcelain bourdalou, circa 1815. What the heck is that?"
"A portable chamber pot. Designed for ladies' relief during particularly tedious church sessions, when they were locked into their pews. The vessels also came in handy on long journeys. In England, I believe they were called coach pots."
"A porta-potty, huh? I don't even want to guess where you swiped that from."
Nick flashed her a grin. "An antique shop. I'd followed a pair of plump pigeons inside, but the shop owner took after me before I could relieve his customers of their wallets. Not one to leave empty-handed, I snatched the bourdalou as I exited the premises. It turned out to be one of my best takes."
Mackenzie checked the amount Gireaux had received for the stolen antique and whistled. "I guess so!"
Nick's grin took on a rueful slant. He'd returned to the antique shop decades later and
purchased a set of twenty-four karat gold-rimmed china that had once graced the table of Louis XV. Although Nick had made a show of dickering, he paid twice what the completed set was worth, more than reimbursing the shop owner for the loss of the chamber pot. The exquisite china was now showcased in his Paris restaurant and, ironically, had led to an invitation for Monsieur Jensen to become a patron of the International Porcelain Collectors' Society.
Nick had engineered similar ruses over the years to repay the cost of other items he'd stolen, but none had taken quite as big a chunk out of his wallet. Now that he had a complete list of his transactions with Gireaux, though, he'd no doubt soon start shelling out more disguised reimbursements.
Assuming, that is, Mackenzie worked her particular brand of magic and put the names of owners to all or most of the items.
She was already hard at it. She had one leg tucked under her. Her third cup of coffee sat close at hand as her fingers flew over the keys of her laptop. She'd clipped her dark hair up, out of the way, and stuck a pen through its dark mass. She appeared cool and calm and thoroughly competent, but all Nick could see was a flushed, furious Mackenzie sprawled beneath him on the carpet.
He still couldn't quite believe she'd used that damned cattle prod on him. Or that he'd had to battle a savage urge to take what she wasn't ready to give. For a few moments, with Mackenzie's body pinned under his, his layers of civilization had peeled away. He'd wanted to do more than just subdue her. He'd wanted to claim her.
Even now, just sitting here watching her scowl at the computer screen evoked primitive impulses that were more suited to a cave than an elegantly furnished suite in one of the world's most expensive hotels.
He had it bad, Nick thought, blowing out a breath. Much worse than he'd realized. And now that he'd shown Mackenzie a glimpse of what lurked beneath his veneer of sophistication, he suspected he'd have a tough time regaining lost ground...both as her boss and the man who was determined to finish what they'd started a little while ago on the floor.
This, Nick thought wryly, was going to take every ounce of finesse he possessed and then some. Uncoiling his long length, he abandoned the sofa.
"You do your magic," he said when Mackenzie glanced up with a question in her eyes. "I'll shower and change, then take you to the Cours Saleya."
"Which is?"
"The heart of the city. Sooner or later you'll run into every Nicois there."
Nodding, Mackenzie went back to clicking the keys. Her fingers stilled when Nick entered his bedroom, however. She sat, chewing her lower lip, until she picked up the faint drum of his shower.
The session with the Taser had made her cautious. Very cautious. But she had no intention of being left behind to stew the next time Nick decided to take off on his own.
Easing out of her chair, she went to her own room and dug into her bag of tricks. A moment later, she extracted a small, flat disc that contained the latest in homing devices. The composite material encasing the hair-thin transmitter was as supple as Saran Wrap and allowed for much higher conductivity. The signal this baby sent out consisted of short, variable pulses that defied interception and interpretation by anyone who didn't have access to the code. Unless OMEGA had been completely compromised, Mackenzie was the only person in the south of France who possessed that code.
Her heart hammering, she slipped into Nick's room. Steam rolled from the open door to the bath. With an ear tuned to the pulsing shower, she moved to the antique dresser. Her breath eased out in a sigh of relief when she spotted his watch among a scatter of keys and loose change.
In less than a minute, she'd pried off the watch's back, stuck the transmitter to the inside and snapped the case shut.
She was back at her computer, keys clicking, when Nick emerged from his bedroom. The black slacks and turtleneck were gone. So was the gold stubble that had shaded his cheeks and chin. In charcoal-gray slacks, Italian leather shoes and belt, and a white linen shirt with the neck open and the sleeves rolled up, he didn't look like a cat burglar who'd broken into a Cannes pawnshop in the middle of the night. Nor like the furious, tight-jawed agent who'd knocked Mackenzie's feet out from under her and tumbled her to the floor. With a dart of satisfaction, she saw he was wearing his watch.
"Ready to take a break?" he asked.
"I might as well. I've cross-referenced all the items by type and date stolen and fired off inquiries to every database OMEGA has legal access to."
And a few they didn't. She'd disguised the inquiries to make sure the cyber police couldn't track them back to either her or OMEGA. In the remote chance they did, she figured getting shot at by thugs gave her certain extraordinary privileges.
‘‘This would have been easier and quicker if you hadn't been such a prolific thief," she commented, flipping down the lid of the laptop.
"Everyone should be good at something."
She could name a few other things this man was good at. Her mouth still tingled from the force of his kiss. So did the sensitive tips of her breasts.
"When do you think we'll start getting replies to your queries?"
"Hopefully, we'll have some waiting for us when we get back," she replied as he escorted her out of the suite. "Where are we going, again?"
"The Cours Saleya. Nice's open-air market."
Chapter 7
The limo driver's tale of the obese laundress had tickled Mackenzie's sense of humor and engendered a certain level of affection for Nice. The Cours Saleya tumbled her right into love with the city.
Her years in the military had taken her to dozens of foreign countries and countless open-air markets. Many were larger than this one. Some were more elaborate. But none assaulted her senses with such a brilliant profusion of color and scents. The flowers and fruits alone were enough to make her wish she'd graduated beyond paint-by-the-numbers.
Gloriously purple irises, bloodred gladiolas, kiss me-pink geraniums and endless banks of sunshine-yellow mums dazzled and delighted her eye. The fruit stalls were just as vivid, with tall pyramids of pomegranates, artful displays of grapes and kaleidoscopes of kiwi, oranges, lemons and limes.
Cases of marzipan sat side by side with the real thing. The candy strawberries, apples, pears and cherries were so skillfully crafted and displayed that at first glance Mackenzie didn't realize they weren't the authentic items.
But it was the spice market that stole her heart. Her nostrils tingling, she drank in the pungent tang of wild onions and garlic. Rosemary, thyme and sage. Lavender. Dill. Marjoram. Dozens of other exotic aromas she couldn't identify. While her olfactory nerves tried to sort them all out, her delighted gaze roamed the displays under the tented awnings.
The wild explosion of color must have sent Matisse and Picasso into raptures. Although the spices themselves were dried and mostly grayish-green in color, the wily merchants presented them in small, square baskets lined with a variety of brightly colored cloth napkins. The lavender-blues and sunshine-yellows that seemed to characterize the south of France predominated, accented by splashes of red and green and poppy-pink.
"I've never seen anything like this," Mackenzie murmured to Nick. "Nature used every color in her palette to paint this scene."
"Nature and the Nicois," he answered with a smile.
His glance roamed the scene, taking in the rows of tented stalls, the housewives with long, crusty baguettes poking from their shopping bags, the tourists bused over from the cruise ships docked at nearby Monaco.
Nick never felt at home, really at home, until he hit the morning market and drank in the aroma of the spices that grew so plentifully in the hills above the Cote d'Azur. Of course, the thronged aisles between the stalls might have something to do with his sense of coming home. He'd lifted many a camera and wallet in crowded marketplaces just like this one.
The suspicion that his years of thievery were now coming back to haunt him was fast hardening into certainty. The phone call he'd made to the Cannes Inspector of Poli
ce this morning had forged another link in the chain. He waited until he and Mackenzie claimed a table at one of the sidewalk cafes that ringed the market to tell her about the call.
"I talked to the Inspector of Police in Cannes this morning," he said over coffee and croissants still warm from the oven.
"You did? When?"
"After I got out of the shower."
"Why didn't you tell me?"
"I am telling you."
Her brows snapped together. "It would be nice if you clued me in about little things like breaking into pawnshops and conversations with the police before you decide to have them, not after the fact."
The retort won her a sharp look from OMEGA's director. "Careful, Comm."
With exaggerated care, Mackenzie placed her knife and flaky croissant on her plate. "Pulling rank on me, Lightning?"
"If I have to."
"Don't you think it's a little late for that?"
She was right. They'd crossed the line between boss and subordinate this morning, Mackenzie by deliberately poking that damned cattle prod into his shoulder, Nick by stretching her out under him and taking the taste he'd been craving for months now. They both knew they couldn't step back over that line, but where the hell they went from here was still up for discussion. With a nod, Nick accepted full responsibility for their altered and as yet undefined relationship.
"You're right. I let matters get out of hand this morning. I apologize."
The apology took Mackenzie by surprise... almost as much as the promise that followed.
"It won't happen again."
Well, hell! He beat her to the punch again! She had intended to make that calm pronouncement, just as she had intended to break off the kiss earlier this morning. It was tough trying to claim the high moral ground when the man kept cutting it out from under her.
Maybe it was time to stop trying. Nick had to have sensed the surge in her pulse this morning. Had to have guessed how that kiss affected her. Rather than deny the attraction, maybe she needed to be honest about why things couldn't go any further.
To Love a Thief Page 6