Julie Leto – Too Wicked to Keep (страница 7)

“I mean about Marshall.”

When Abby had thrown him out of her room on the night before her wedding, Danny had taken the rejection hard. He always spent the weeks after a job underground, but after Chicago, he’d gone completely off the grid in Mexico. After a few cases of tequila and more beer than a man should drink in a lifetime, he’d finally decided that Abby was better off without him. If Marshall Chamberlain loved her enough to forgive her indiscretion, then he must have loved her more than Danny could even comprehend.

So how the hell could he have left her a short five years later?

“I can’t believe he dumped you.”

“He didn’t,” she said, her eyes flaring.

“Then where the hell is he? Or is thievery just beneath him, so he’s left it all to you?”

“There isn’t anything much beneath him anymore except dirt,” she choked out. “He’s dead.”

She made the callous statement, then instantly turned away. She flattened her left palm on the window, as if she needed contact with the glass to cool her emotions. Or maybe she was mourning the absence of her ring. A slight shadow encircled her fourth finger, a reminder of where the band had been. She’d taken it off, but only recently.

“I’m sorry. When?”

She gave a tiny shrug, as if she hadn’t been counting the days, when he guessed she could probably calculate the man’s last breath to the minute.

“A little over a year ago. He was on his way to his office and a semi lost control on the highway and he was gone.”

The crack in the foundation of her voice tore at his insides, but Danny had no right to share her grief. No right to try and comfort her.

But he still had to say something.

“I really am sorry.”

“So am I. But if there was one thing I knew about Marshall, and I knew everything about him,” she said, skewering him with a glare that dared him to challenge her, “it was that he’d want me to move forward. Put the past behind me, once and for all. That was the entire basis for our marriage. He never once threw our affair in my face. He didn’t make me pay for how I betrayed him with you, even though he probably should have.”

Danny couldn’t believe how easily she talked about this. The Abby he’d known had always shied away from discussing anything painful or unpleasant. Despite his offers to meet her out of town, even a suggestion they fly up to Toronto for a rendezvous, their liaisons had only taken place at night, in locked rooms or shadowed corners.

Even when they were alone, she’d been conditioned to keep her deepest thoughts to herself. He’d had to pull out all the stops to sneak behind her private walls. But he’d succeeded, or at least, he’d thought he had. By the time he’d finally learned how to retrieve the painting without triggering her security system, he’d discovered all sorts of things about her that he hadn’t really wanted to know.

Her secret passions.

Her most erotic fantasies.

Her deepest, most desperate dreams.

She’d also confessed how desperately she wanted a man who understood the real her. Not the cool, controlled young lady of wealth that she’d been trained to be, but the innately curious, impassioned lover of sensual beauty that she kept so well hidden.

Before him, she hadn’t revealed that woman to anyone, not even to her fiancé. She’d been too embarrassed, too self-conscious, too afraid that Marshall would run in the other direction quicker than he could say scandal.

David Brandon, on the other hand, knew precisely how to coax that side of her out of hiding. He’d cultivated her need for freedom with honeyed words and wicked suggestions spoken to burn through the layers of her fears. David Brandon did not judge her. How could he, when his whole persona was one big fat lie?

The plane began to move, so they were quiet while the pilot taxied down the runway, gained speed and then altitude. When a ding indicated they’d reached their cruising height, Danny caught Abby staring at him, her eyebrows scrunched tightly together.

“I don’t understand you,” she declared.

“Welcome to the club. I can’t figure me out, and I am, hands down, the smartest guy I know.”

She didn’t crack a smile.

“I mean, I get that you’re all complicated and tragic. Charming on the outside and brooding and miserable on the inside.” She waved her hand, as if her gesture could dismiss the very core of him, which he’d never heard so succinctly summarized. “But why would you come with me so easily? Is it just because you might be exposed?”

“Nope,” he said breezily. “I’m in it for the cash.”

“I didn’t offer you any money. And even if I did, you don’t need it. You have a very wealthy brother who paid a king’s ransom for the criminal attorney who got you out of jail. And you and I both know that you have to have a boatload of cash stashed somewhere. International art thieves don’t come cheap.”

“You’ve certainly learned a lot over the last five years.”

“To say the least,” she replied.

“Care to share some of your wisdom?”

He didn’t know why he was asking. In his entire life, he’d never once asked for anyone’s advice. Sure, he’d watched people he admired and listened carefully whenever they spoke to glean whatever nugget of information he could mine for a greater take, but he’d never out-and-out asked anyone to share their insight about…well, about anything.

Unfortunately, from Abby’s frown, she didn’t look anxious to share.

“I’m sure the things I’ve learned you committed to memory by the age of eight.”

“That everyone is a liar and a thief, you mean. In one way or another?”

“Yeah,” she acknowledged. “That.”

“You’re not,” he argued.

“Not what? A liar? Please, Daniel. Don’t sugarcoat on my account.”

“I’m not,” he insisted. “You told Marshall the truth about us, didn’t you?”

“Only after lying to him for weeks. And I colluded with my mother to get my father out of the country. And I expect that by this time next week, I’ll have lied enough to match your level of expertise.”

She unbuckled her seat belt and retreated to the galley at the back of the plane. She tugged open the built-in wine cooler and extracted a bottle without giving the label a second glance. When her hunt for a corkscrew escalated from frustrated to frantic, he joined her.

“I should have kept the champagne,” she said with a slightly maniacal laugh. “It was already open.”

“Let me.” He reached out to touch her shoulder, but pulled back. She didn’t want him to touch her—she’d made that clear. And right now, he didn’t think she needed one more reason to hate him.

She didn’t turn around, but clutched the countertop in front of her.

“I loved Marshall.”

“I know.”

From their first contact, their first kiss, their first hot, frantic sexual encounter in a darkened corner of the museum after hours, Danny had known that Abby had only gravitated to him because of excitement and exploration and lust. He was a man unlike any she’d ever encountered—one who had been tailored to her needs, her wants, her desires. In giving her what she so secretly craved, he’d taken what he’d come for and then counted on her loyalty to the man she really loved in order to cover up his own crime.

What Danny hadn’t factored into the equation was that once he delivered the painting to his buyer, he hadn’t been able to follow his usual routine, which was to disappear until the heat from the crime wore off. Instead, he’d walked right back into the fire, determined to steal Abby, too.

But not to fence her for someone else to enjoy—she was a treasure he’d wanted for himself.

One he could never have.

He wished he could define what it was about her that was so enthralling. Despite her sexier packaging, he still sensed her reined-in wildness, her continued struggle between doing what was expected of her and acting on her raging need to be free.

In a lot of ways, she lived a double life the same as he did.

Once upon a time, Abby had been as simple to figure out as a game of Three Card Monty. Now, she was more like Omaha Hi/Lo Hold’Em Poker—complex and challenging, with variations the average player wouldn’t understand.

Luckily, Danny was well above average.

“I’m sorry for what I did to you, Abby. I’m sorry that I took something you valued so much. I have no good excuse, I just have the truth. I’m a thief. Stealing is what I do. It’s what you’re counting on me to do when we get to Chicago.”

At this, she spun around. Her eyes were dry, but streaked with red. “And you agreed with hardly a second thought.”

He clasped his hands behind his back to keep from grabbing her by the shoulders and kissing her. The action was all levels of wrong, but the need to backtrack out of this conversation was powerful.

“Of course I agreed. Stealing is what I do. Besides, I only steal from people who can afford it,” he explained with a wink. “And my expertise is in stealing things. The value we put on tangible items in our society is the real crime.”

She snorted, then pushed past him, abandoning the wine. “Philosophy? Not your forte.”

“Clearly,” he said wryly.

She marched down the aisle and threw herself back into her seat. Danny took a quick look through a drawer, found a corkscrew, grabbed the wine bottle and joined her. As he had not thought to pack a parachute, he had nowhere to run and a lot of air space to endure before they reached Chicago. The whole experience would be a hell of a lot better after a few glasses of Pinot Noir.