Bloody hell. He had to stop wrestling with his conscience—and his hormones—and get them both focused on the matter at hand. He’d gone down to the lobby earlier and done his best to charm the youngest, most inexperienced front-desk registrar into inadvertently revealing whether or not Tolliver had checked anything into the hotel safe.
Behaving as if he was an acquaintance of the old Brit, which, in point of fact, he was, Simon had joked with her about whether or not they would have space for the important objets d’ art he planned to purchase while in town, or if Tolliver’s crates containing the collection he was donating to the Art Institute for the gala that weekend had taken up all the room. She’d blushingly assured him that they could handle whatever he brought in and added that, as far as she knew, Tolliver’s crates must not have arrived as he hadn’t checked anything into the safe.
Of course, Tolliver’s crates would have gone directly to the museum, but the desk help didn’t know that. Mission accomplished.
Which meant the Shay was wherever Tolliver was. Which was unfortunate, but not surprising. He was a control freak who didn’t trust a soul. And he wasn’t in his room, which was what the phone call just now had informed him of. This significantly reduced his chances at retrieving the Shay. If Tolliver spotted him, he’d know exactly why Simon was there.
But now he had Sophie. And Tolliver wouldn’t suspect her of anything.
“So, this old velvet case you’re retrieving, it’s a favor for a friend? And the person you’re taking it from doesn’t play well with others. Does your friend know what kind of trouble this could land you in?”
“No more so, I’d venture to say, than your friend did when she asked you for help.”
Sophie opened her mouth, then shut it again and gave him a rueful look. “Given my success rate thus far, I’m surprised you’re willing to trust me with this.”
“My options are limited.” Which was exceedingly true. Not knowing what exactly Tolliver had in mind by coming to the States and being the benefactor behind the art gala exhibit, Simon hadn’t been able to put any specific plan in place. He’d only known that Tolliver never did anything, certainly not splashy as this, given he was otherwise a man who enjoyed his privacy, without there being an ulterior motive. And when he’d tracked him and the Shay to Heathrow, he’d known even as he’d boarded the flight that it had something to do with his vendetta against Guinn MacRanald. Tolliver had won, but he hadn’t finished destroying Guinn completely. It wouldn’t be enough just to have the Shay in his possession. No, Tolliver would want to make certain that Guinn knew exactly what he’d done, while the world watched.
The gala event was Friday evening, likely the only time the Shay would be on display. And given the person who’d checked in with Tolliver, Simon had a pretty good idea of exactly how he intended to display it.
If he didn’t snag it from Tolliver’s room before then, then the only other window of opportunity would be taking it directly off the neck of Tolliver’s roommate. He had a name now, but hadn’t had the time, given his unexpected guest, to look her up. Just because he didn’t recognize it, didn’t mean anything. He didn’t exactly spend time keeping up with the glitterati. But, likely as not, she was a model or starlet of some reknown who would showcase the emerald around a slender neck, topped by a high-wattage smile, and, most importantly, plenty of media coverage every time she so much as batted a lash.
In Tolliver’s mind, there would be no better way to make an international statement of ownership than to have the piece on his arm, as it were, highly visible for all to see. But Simon knew he was insanely possessive of his assets, most especially this one, and that the Shay would be vaulted immediately upon his return to London.
And Tolliver’s safe didn’t have a convenient passkey.
“So, I’m basically a desperation move,” Sophie said. “There’s a hearty endorsement. I feel much better about this now.”
Now he sighed. “Listen, I don’t like this any more than you do.”
“I might like it even less.”
“Let’s call it a draw. The bottom line is, I need to retrieve something from a fellow guest that does not belong to him, and return it to its rightful owner. My best chance of doing that is here and now. However, I’m known to your guest, and, let’s just say—”
“He wouldn’t be all that excited to see you?”
“An understatement.”
“Ah.”
“Indeed.”
“So why not wait for this guest to leave his room, and then do…whatever it is you do?”
“Because it goes where he goes.”
“Oh.” Her shoulders lost a bit of their rigidness. “So, he carries this thing with him?”
“Yes. Or his companion might.”
“There are two people in the room? Silas—”
“Simon.”
She blinked. “What?”
He swore under his breath. A fine thief he made. “It’s Simon. Lassiter. There, now you have leverage. More than I should be giving if I knew what was good for me, but if that were the case, I wouldn’t be here, now would I? No, I’d be back in London, working a normal assignment like a regular, sane bloke who hasn’t managed to bungle things up and land himself in this ridiculous situation.” He ended with another string of epithets.
She waited a beat to make sure he was finished, then smiled. “Impressive. Are you like this all the time when you’re stressed? Or am I rubbing off on you?”
“I wouldn’t hazard to guess at this point.”
“Well, thank you. Simon.” She tilted her head slightly. “It suits you, you know.”
“My mum, God rest her soul, would thank you for that. She fought my father on that score. It’s an old family name on her side.”
“What did your father want to name you?”
“Bartholomew. After himself.”
She made a face. “I’m glad your mom stuck to her guns. No insult to your dad, of course. But that’s a lot to saddle a kid with.”
“They compromised.”
She eyed him. “You have siblings, then? Your poor younger brother got it instead?”
He shook his head. It took her a moment, then she laughed. “Simon Bartholomew Lassiter?”
“In the flesh.”
Her cheeks suddenly flushed a bit. “Mmm” was all she said, then swiftly went on. “Sounds like they had a good relationship. Compromising, I mean. Not everyone is good at that. And I’m sorry she’s no longer with you. Your eyes warm up a lot when you talk about her.”
Her expression took on an empathy he didn’t usually see when that information popped up. Which it rarely did as he wasn’t in the habit of discussing his family with anyone. But on the rare occasion that he did, the reaction was usually one of pity. He had no use for that, but this was…effective.
“I lost my mother, too,” she said. “When I was nine. And my father. Car accident. Icy roads. My grandmother raised me. She passed five years ago.”
He dipped his chin then, breaking eye contact. They shouldn’t be doing this. This…getting to know about each other thing. It was bad enough he’d drawn her into this, bad enough he was drawn to her, period. And he was. Drawn. And the tugging was getting stronger. “I’m sorry to hear that,” he said, intending to sound sincere, but in a way that didn’t brook further conversation. Only it didn’t accomplish that at all. Probably because he truly was sincere.
“Brain aneurysm,” Sophie said, both bluntly and a bit wistfully. How she managed that, he didn’t know. “My grandmother, I mean. She was gone in a blink.”
“Very sorry,” he said, and meant it.
She didn’t say more, and he felt the weight of her expectation that he return the gesture of faith by sharing his own tale. “We need to discuss strategy,” he said. “I don’t want to unnecessarily compromise you, but—”
“Simon.”
He should have never told her his name. He’d hated hearing her call him something false, but this was almost worse.
Far worse, actually. “Nothing so dramatic, I assure you,” he said, by way of explanation. When he looked up to find her watching him expectantly, and with exaggerated patience, he sighed and said, “Complications during surgery. She’d had a kidney transplant and there were continuing problems. She hadn’t been in such good shape before, so it was sad, but not entirely unexpected.”
“How long ago?”
“I’d just completed university. Eight years, I suppose it is now.”
“Was she…what did you call yourself? Kiwi?”
He shook his head. “Aussie, part Malaysian. Born in Melbourne. Her parents moved to the North Island when she was seventeen. My father, as his father before him, was a vintner in Hawke’s Bay. They met when her parents were looking for work in the area. He thought she was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen and forever treated her as such.”
“That’s…so lovely,” Sophie said, sounding surprised. She blinked her eyes a couple of times and looked down at her hands for a moment. “She sounds like a very lucky woman, despite the physical setbacks. A husband who adored her and a son—”
“Who is forcing a complete stranger to steal for him. Yes, she’d be ever so proud.”
Sophie surprised him by smiling at that. “I wouldn’t say complete strangers.” The smile softened. “Not now.”
He looked at her then, truly looked at her, and found himself shaking his head.
“What?” she said, no longer smiling. “What have I done or said now? If you’re worried that sharing details of your life with me is somehow weakening your position, I can assure you, you’re quite wrong on that.”
“I’m getting that.”
“Are you? Then why the look? As if I’m ridiculous somehow.”
Funny, he thought, how she turned all kinds of pink when thinking of his person, his body, but had no problem challenging him intellectually, debating him to his face. “Hardly that. Far from that. I just… You just sort of barge ahead, you know, into life. You’re bright and intelligent, but sometimes your common sense—”
“I realize that given my current position, I can hardly debate the merits of my wits or lack thereof, but I assure you, I didn’t get to be manager of this place before turning thirty because I’m a bubblehead.”
He started to rebut, then stopped. Then laughed. Then shook his head again. “No, you’re no bubblehead.”
“Thank you.”
“You’re quite welcome.” He thought about trying to explain to her what it was about her that was such an enigma to him, but decided he hadn’t quite figured that out himself just yet, so best to leave this conversation be entirely for the moment. Forever, if he was smart. But his wits could hardly be called sharp since she’d come into his life, either.
“I do barge ahead, as you put it,” she said, after the silence had spun out a few moments longer than necessary. “But I feel like life demands that. If you want to get anywhere, you’re not going to do it sitting around and waiting, you know? I know I don’t look like some fierce boardroom warrior woman, but I can hardly do anything about the face I was handed, much less the rest.” She gestured to her body, which he was trying—fiercely—to cease responding to, and mostly failing. He was having even less luck not thinking about it.
Along with those deluxe lips and fistfuls of soft curls, she had an ample figure. Ample. That was the word. Bordering on voluptuous. Lush. A word he’d never used once, and yet she was it, personified. She was softly rounded in all the right places. No bony shoulders or stringy arms. No jutting hips or stalklike legs. Her hips flared broadly, and though he could probably span her waist with his hands, if he cupped them over her breasts, he was certain he couldn’t contain their fullness in his palms. She was wearing rather sexless trousers, but he’d bet her legs were shapely and strong from all the walking and running around this place that she must do as part of her job. He knew from personal observation when she’d been bent over, digging in that chair, that there were no trousers sexless enough to hide her heartshaped backside.
Yeah, the last thing he needed was her referring to her face or her body. She might not look like a warrior woman, but she’d most certainly laid siege to him like one.
“But just because I look like some naive milkmaid from an eighteenth-century British painting, doesn’t mean I think like one.”
He wanted to beg her to stop handing him more imagery to torture himself with. “You have this rose-colored-glasses sort of permanent optimism about you. Which is a great attitude, but there is a guilelessness to it that…well, I’d think, especially in a city this big, in this kind of environment, that you’d have long since been chewed up whole, or had the rosy stomped out of you.”
“Have you?”
He laughed then, but there was no humor in it. “I don’t know that my temperament or outlook on life would ever have been described as rosy.”
“Your parents sound like they were pretty rosy, so it only goes to follow you would’ve at least observed it growing up. I have no idea what’s happened to make you change your mind about it, but I think we all do the best with what we have, or at least try to. That’s a rosy outlook. And, despite setbacks to that natural optimism, I’ve fared okay. Until this morning, anyway.”
“I suppose you have,” he said, somewhat thoughtfully.
“But you think you haven’t? Hard to believe two people who loved like you say they did would raise a son who didn’t believe in it.”
“I didn’t say I didn’t believe in love or the kind of commitment my parents shared.”
“Well, if you believe in that, then you’re an optimist.”
“That doesn’t make any sense. You can believe in the power of love, even if you’re cynical enough to question people’s motives. Not everyone is loving and kind—”
“Nor is everyone sinister and mean.”
“Exactly.”
“And it takes an optimist to know the difference. A pessimist would assume the worst. Clearly, you don’t. Or you wouldn’t be here risking what you’re risking for the sake of a friend.”
“There are all kinds of motives for doing the right thing. Don’t be so swift to ascribe heroic qualities to me. I’m here to do the right thing, but only because I did the wrong thing first. A very wrong thing.”
She laughed.
He frowned. “You find that amusing?”
“No. I find it human.” She gestured to her currently bound ankles. “I know all about being human. And occasionally doing very wrong things.” He started to respond, but she held up her hand. “Just tell me one thing. When you were doing that very wrong thing, did you know it was wrong? What I mean, I guess, is were you intentionally causing harm to someone?”
“I thought I was helping,” he said, very honestly. “But I should have questioned what I thought I knew. I had enough clues to the contrary.”
She shrugged. “Human.”
He sighed and rolled his suddenly weary shoulders. “We have a small window, and a lot to discuss.”
“We’re going to be spending the next who-knows-how-many hours together, right? Trust building isn’t a bad thing.”
“Sophie—”
She lifted her hands, palms out, in surrender. “So, when do I start my new life as a cat burglar?”
“Excuse me?”
“Sounds more exciting than common thief. Well, unless it’s being a jewel thief. That’s always been a more—” She broke off, as if she’d noted some change in his expression.
Which was unfortunate, as he’d been really careful not to have one. But then, around her it was hard to maintain anything for any length of time since he never knew what was going to come out of her mouth next.
“I’m stealing jewelry? Seriously? As in really, ridiculously expensive jewelry? Of course, what other kind would you steal, right? And if it’s in an old velvet case, I’m guessing really, really old, expensive jewelry.”
“What’s in the case isn’t important.”
“Of course it’s
important. Stealing heirloom gemstones isn’t like I’m taking someone’s antique marble collection or something.”
“Those can be very valuable, I’ll have you know.”
“And you know this because, what, someone actually asked you to get his marbles back?”
“Actually, they were his great-grandfather’s marbles, which his grandmother had given away after writing her son out of her will.”
“And his great-grandson wanted you to track them down all those years later because…”
“Because great-granddad had written about them in his journal, and about the tournaments he’d won with them, both as a kid and a young adult, and he grew really fascinated by them. The shooter that was described in the journal—that’s the big marble you use to hit out the other marbles, not a hired gun—was quite famous, amongst those in the sport.”
“Which is a relief to know. About the shooter. I mean, I wouldn’t think marbles tournaments could be so dangerous, but then I thought I was just retrieving a cell phone this morning.”
“Poke fun, but it went on to be a very highly appraised collection, which is currently on display at a museum in Germany.”
“So, you actually found it.”
He nodded. “One of the more challenging cases I’ve taken on, but very gratifying and quite fascinating, actually. I didn’t know anything about mibology when I took the assignment, but—”
“Mibology?”
“Study of marbles.”
She shook her head. “Right. Of course.”
“When I took the case, I studied up on that while simultaneously doing the background work on their family tree, and who would have wanted a collection of that caliber. Given that it was well-known, I could only hope someone had bought them up as a set. Then prayed like hell that that person’s descendants hadn’t gotten rid of them.”
Simon Says... Page 7