Simon Says...

by Donna Kauffman

  “Are you?” she asked. “A bad guy, I mean? Isn’t this where you tell me you work for Interpol, or some hush-hush government agency, and by giving you my passkey, I’ll be helping to maintain national security?”

  “No, nothing so exciting as all that.” His smile spread to a grin. “Although, as cover stories go, that one is quite good. I’ll have to remember it.”

  “So…who are you, then? And why do you need a master passkey?”

  “Those are probably questions it’s best you don’t have the answers to. You’ll have to trust me.”

  “Like you trust me?”

  “Look at it this way. We’ll both have something on the other that is likely to keep us in line. What better measure of trust is there?”

  “That’s blackmail, not trust.”

  He just shrugged.

  “Whose room do you want to get into?”

  “More information you don’t need to know.”

  “I will if I’m going to help you get into it.”

  He cocked a brow. “So you agree to help me, then?”

  She nodded at the gun. “I hardly see where I have a choice.”

  He didn’t believe her innocent face, not for a second. More likely she was hoping to learn as much as possible so she could find a way to get out, and report him. He wiggled the fingers of his still outstretched hand. “I’ll return the key when I’m done.”

  “My trust doesn’t extend that far. For my own future protection, I need to know where it was used. The key and I stay together.”

  “Except that wouldn’t protect you. Quite the opposite. If something goes awry with my…mission, you can honestly disavow any knowledge of how it was used, as you truly won’t know. It’s to your advantage to hand it over. And if it’s not actually yours, then you can step out of the chain of ownership completely. I won’t point the finger at you and I can leave it wherever it would best suit your needs for someone to find it when I’m done. I think that’s a very fair trade.”

  “Just show me where you want to go and I’ll let you in, then keep the key on me. We part ways and no one is the wiser. On either side.”

  “Then you’d be a willing accomplice. Not a good thing. You’re really not that good on this whole criminal acts thing, are you?”

  “I told you. This is an aberration. I’m the Goody Two-shoes of my group, trust me. It was a wild act of rebellion for me just to stage the damn stealth bachelorette party in the first place.”

  He half-laughed. “The goodie-what?”

  “Never mind.”

  “Sounds like you’re rather making a new sport out of rebellious behavior. Although what a stealth bachelorette party is, I couldn’t hope to fathom.” He held up his hand. “And don’t wish to.”

  “You can mock me all you want, but I’m not giving you the key. If something goes awry, as you said, and I’m implicated in any way, then I’ll tell them you forced me, threatened me. Given the gun, I think I’ll be perfectly believable. So, give me the room number and let’s go.”

  Under other circumstances he might have found her adorably stubborn, but at the moment, he wasn’t so amused. “I won’t be using it immediately. So I will take the key now…or you can prepare to be my guest for a while.”

  Her gaze narrowed. “How long is ‘a while’?”

  He shrugged. “A day or two, probably, at the most.”

  “You can’t keep me here that long,” she exclaimed.

  “I don’t see why not. The hotel offers very nice room service. You’ll live in relative comfort, lend me the key when it’s needed, then we’ll part ways.”

  “I have a job, friends, a wedding. I’ll be missed.”

  Now his eyes widened. “So, was it your own party you were arranging, then?” He couldn’t say why the news disappointed him so. Considering he wasn’t planning on doing anything with her other than obtaining her helpful little key card, it didn’t matter if she was already otherwise involved. And yet the thought didn’t make him happy.

  “My best friend is getting married this weekend. Sunday. Here. In the hotel. It was her phone I was trying to retrieve.”

  “Ah.” He smiled as the puzzle pieces began to align themselves. “Well, perhaps you won’t have to concern yourself with that if that unanswered call was as important as you say. And, think of it, you’ll be out of the line of fire, which might be to your advantage given the role you say you played in your friend’s downfall.”

  “Her fiancé is Adam Wingate.”

  Bloody hell. Simon tried not to visibly react. Of course he couldn’t just luck into an easy solution to the job at hand. He had to get a whole handful of new obstacles. “Of the Wingate Hotel Wingates, I presume?”

  She nodded. “You know, I’m still okay with just getting up and walking out of here and pretending we never met.”

  “Good try.” He tapped the barrel of the gun against his thigh, sorting through the possibilities. “How close are you with the Wingate family, then?”

  “I’m not. My friend is. They aren’t big fans of friends from what will soon be her former life, so don’t get any ideas.” She kept looking at the gun, then back at him. “And after they find out I threw the bachelorette party…” He was surprised to see a rueful smile touching the corners of her mouth when she looked back at him. “You know, on second thought, maybe I will hide out here.”

  His smile returned. She was an interesting woman, he’d give her that. She had pluck. And heart. She’d broken into a stranger’s hotel room for the sake of a friend. He might be able to use that good heart to his advantage.

  But he hadn’t missed the slight tremor in her fingers. Not quite as insouciant as she’d like him to believe, then.

  “If you don’t tell me something of what your plans are,” she added, “then I don’t really have anything on you. You said we’d both have leverage.”

  “I have the gun. You have the key.”

  “Guess who wins that matchup? If you’re really willing to shoot me, that is.”

  “You have no idea what I’m capable of.”

  She shuddered. “Exactly.” With a considering look on her face, she looked at the bed.

  He followed her gaze, more intrigued than he should be by her sudden interest in that particular part of the room. In fact, he was more intrigued by her than he should be, period. He had never minded working alone, living alone. It suited him, or he’d grown to embrace it, anyway. It was essential to his line of work, at which he excelled. And it made sense to stick with what one was good at, didn’t it?

  Partners led to problems. Personally and professionally. That was his motto and nothing that he’d learned in life thus far had encouraged him to change that belief. He certainly had no business changing it now, of all times. For the first time he was operating on his own, not in the employ of someone else. He had this one chance to fix what he’d screwed up, and right a very lamentable wrong.

  “Somebody else might,” she said, pulling him from his straying thoughts.

  “Somebody else might what?”

  “Know what you’re capable of. The owner of those panties, for instance.”

  He smiled. “The cleaning staff here might need a bit of prodding to be more thorough in their cleaning.”

  “Indiana Jones wouldn’t have found those panties. I don’t even want to know what you were doing to bury them so deep.” Her cheeks turned rosy as her unintentional entendre hung out there for a long beat. But she recovered and bulled on with an attempt at a carefree lift of the shoulder. “For all I know you want to get into another guest’s room over some woman you’re involved with. Is this a domestic situation?”

  “Hardly.”

  “You say that as if you can’t imagine a woman being so important.”

  “Your supposition, not mine,” he said, more irritated than he should be by her summation. After all, hadn’t he just had the exact same thought?

  “So, if it’s not a lover or significant other behind all this, then who?”


  “Who said it was a who?” He immediately gave himself a swift mental kick. She had this way of easing information out of him when he wasn’t paying attention. Those soft curls, big eyes and cupid-bow lips, made it too easy to forget she could potentially ruin everything. He wasn’t entirely sure what his plans were going to be, moving forward, but if he didn’t get the Shay back under Guinn’s deserving ownership first, it might not matter.

  “So, you don’t want access to someone, you want access to something. But guests generally don’t keep anything of great value in their rooms. Anything valuable would be in the hotel safe. Which is well guarded,” she hurried to add. “With everyone so concerned these days about security, the whole system was overhauled recently and now uses the latest technology.”

  “Yes, I believe you offered its protection earlier, for the safekeeping of my leverage here.” He wiggled the gun barrel. “So…given your insight into the inner workings of the hotel, including security, I assume that passkey is yours, then?”

  The flash that crossed her face was answer enough, but he waited to hear her response. It was a small measure of comfort to know he wasn’t the only one having difficulty keeping delicate information under wraps. Except he was the professional here. So it was a surprise when she opted to not risk damning herself further and kept silent. An admirable trait not often seen in the fairer sex, in his experience.

  “Well, your having access to the vault does add a new element to the situation,” he said. “A good one, I might add.”

  She looked away and he could see the self-recrimination on her lovely face. She really wasn’t having a good day.

  Any other time, he’d be sympathetic. In fact, he’d probably have even offered to help her out. More than was probably wise, he’d been the champion of the downtrodden and the underdog when considering which job to take on. His bottom line wasn’t often improved by those choices, but he slept better at night, which was a fine trade-off as far as he was concerned. If only he’d followed his gut where Guinn was concerned, who’d quite clearly been the underdog, but with a rather ambiguous claim on the Shay…and not helped Tolliver, with his well-documented claim to the stone, he wouldn’t be in his current situation.

  But it was precisely because of his current situation that helping her was out of the question. She’d gotten herself into her current predicament by making less-than-wise choices herself. Unfortunately, she was going to have to be left to deal with those consequences. She was handing him a possible solution he couldn’t ignore. As a hotel employee with a clear knowledge of hotel security protocol, her unauthorized use of a master key took on even greater significance. Which meant more leverage for him. He had no choice but to use it.

  “How do I know you won’t turn me in after you get what you want?” she asked.

  “You don’t.”

  “Which brings me back to the whole leverage debate. What do I have on you? Who are you? Do you work for the government? Ours, yours, whatever?”

  “Nothing so dashing and heroic. What makes you think I’m not just a common, garden-variety thief?”

  “There’s nothing common about you,” she replied, then her cheeks once again flushed the most becoming shade of pink. “I mean, your accent is polished, not street-wise, and you carry yourself quite—” Her flush deepened and she looked away from where her gaze had fixed itself on the lower half of his body. “Never mind.” She straightened in her chair and lifted her chin, which would have come across far more effectively if she wasn’t still hugging herself around the middle. “So you’re a thief. You do this often, then?”

  “I’m a recovery specialist.” Which was the truth. His job was to find things that people had lost, or had otherwise lost possession of. He only worked for those who could prove a rightful claim on whatever it was they wanted recovered. Of course, he tried, as best as he could, to stay within the bounds of local laws, wherever he happened to be. On the rare occasion he had to tiptoe across that line, the only one who knew the line had been crossed was the one with little room to point a finger. Sophie was an entirely new kind of threat, however. So he had to think this through carefully.

  “Who do you work for?”

  “Private interests.” Very private this time.

  “Not a garden-variety thief if you’re stealing something from a high-profile hotel.”

  “You sure ask a lot of questions for someone who doesn’t want to be involved.”

  “Information is power.”

  “True. What is your name?” He smiled when she looked at him like he was a nutter for asking her to give up such a vital piece of information without coercion. “I should know the name of my partner in crime.”

  He could see the continued slight tremor in her shoulders and knees, but she held his gaze quite valiantly. “You first,” she said, then added, “Gesture of faith.”

  “You wouldn’t know if I was telling the truth.”

  “Neither will you.”

  “I could find out easily enough by asking anyone on staff if they recognize the name.”

  “It’s a large hotel with lots of employees. Besides which, I could just check the guest register to see who is in this room.”

  He nodded, and didn’t bother to point out that he could have registered under a fake name. “You can call me Silas.” He hadn’t been called by that nickname since he’d been a young boy, but he felt better giving her at least something of the truth. He was going to abuse her goodwill quite enough as it was. He had little else to offer in return.

  “Sophie,” she said, then when he waited a beat longer, she sighed and added, “Maplethorpe.” She lifted a shoulder when he raised a brow. “I couldn’t make something like that up.”

  “You’re being too modest. It’s a lovely name.”

  She didn’t reply, but given he could easily find out more about her as she was an employee here, and that he’d already established she was a lousy liar, he chose to believe her.

  His stomach chose that moment to rumble quietly. He absently rubbed it with his free hand, then remembered the note when it fluttered to the floor. And the rest of the news it had delivered. Tolliver had checked in…but not alone. Shit. She really was distracting. “I have some business to attend to,” he told her before snagging it off the carpet and walking over to the phone on the bedside stand. “I’ll order some room service. I shouldn’t be gone long. You can make yourself at home.”

  “You expect me to just stay in the room while you’re gone?”

  “I could stop downstairs by security and explain that a hotel employee broke into my room this morning. Or you could enjoy a day off at my expense.”

  “They’ll notice when I don’t report for work soon.”

  She’d looked away when she said that. A complete loss as a liar. He doubted any amount of training would fix it, either. He’d simply have to work around it. “When is your next shift?”

  She kept her gaze averted. At least she seemed to realize she wasn’t good at it. Or her conscience wouldn’t allow it. It amazed him she’d mustered up the gumption to break in at all. He hoped her friend appreciated her act of courage. Somehow he doubted it. Friends who’d ask friends to do something like this rarely appreciated the importance of what they were requesting. Something he was a bit too familiar with. Which was why he was here, cleansing old sins and clearing the slate. He should have seen through Tolliver’s philanthropic front to the greed that festered just beneath. And because he hadn’t, he’d retrieved—hell, stolen—something from an innocent old man who, by all rights, should still have possession of the priceless artifact Simon had robbed him of.

  Guinn had no idea he was here, trying to right that wrong, but right it he would. For the old man, and for his own redemption.

  When she didn’t respond, he said, “Well, when the time comes, you may have to call in with some terrible malady that will keep you in bed for a few days.” His gaze strayed to the unmade bed, and thoughts of how she could spend those few days floo
ded his brain with startling clarity and detail. His body responded so swiftly he was forced to step back into the shadows of the hallway. He didn’t mind scaring her a little to ensure she’d help, but he didn’t need the added distraction of her worrying that he would physically attack her. Better to let her believe what he’d said earlier. That the only thing desirable about her was that passkey.

  Then he caught her gaze, also on his unmade bed, and that lovely pink flush had returned to her cheeks…and his body continued its urgent appeal to his baser nature. All those glances at him—all of him—that she’d been unable to defer earlier proved he wasn’t the only one with the same diverting thoughts. It probably would have been better if he didn’t know that about her. He prided himself on his ability to focus on a task to the exclusion of all outside distractions. It was, in part, why he was so good at his job. But the delightfully spirited and surprisingly tenacious Miss Sophie Maplethorpe was turning out to be quite the temptation.

  “So,” he said, lifting the phone. “How do you like your eggs?”

  “You really can’t mean to make me stay here.”

  He sighed as he took in her defiant, cherubic face and the hands that trembled, now clutching the arms of the padded chair. She and that key of hers would either be his salvation, or his downfall.

  So. He had no choice but to ensure it was the former, rather than the latter.

  He laid the gun on the nightstand, then casually ripped the clock from the wall and snapped off the electrical cord. The desk phone cord swiftly followed. Couldn’t have her calling down to the desk for a quick rescue.