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Too Wicked to Keep
Julie Leto


Can a bad boy change for the better?Thief Danny Burnett wonders if the heirloom ring in his possession–once owned by a legendary masked bandit–is as powerful as his brothers say it is. But when heiress Abby Albertini steps back into his life after five long years, Danny knows he's about to find out….Abby needs Danny's help to retrieve something he stole from her. Besides her heart. But Abby's not the naive girl she once was. She has a few naughty tricks up her sleeve. She'll get Danny's help, and teach him a lesson about payback that he won't soon forget–one hot, wicked night at a time!









“Come on, Danny. Aren’t you going to tell me how beautiful I look?”


Abby took a step back, waiting while he drank in the whole delectable picture.

He deserved this. The torture of dragging his gaze up her long, tanned legs cut at his core. Her curved hips, trim waist and slim belly taunted him so that he nearly squeezed his eyes shut once before he reached her sweet, round breasts. But as much as he wanted to look away, he couldn’t.

The flavor of her skin was one he’d never forget. The sound of her pleasured moans echoed through his dreams. The feel of her lips lingering on every intimate part of him was like a chained ghost, haunting him with the sins of his past.

The irony that Abigail Albertini would show up in New Orleans tonight couldn’t be denied. He glanced at the stupid ring his brother had shoved onto his finger. Michael had spouted some nonsense about how the two-hundred-year-old heirloom would change his life, but Danny hadn’t believed it.

Now, he wasn’t so sure.

Abby sidled closer, dancing the tips of her fingers up his shirt, from his waistband to his collar. “I have a job for you. And I’m counting on you being the same low-life thief you used to be.”

Karma could really be a bitch sometimes….







Dear Reader,

I remember the first time I fell in love with a scoundrel. I was eleven years old. His name was Han Solo. I liked the way Princess Leia pushed him around, but he pushed back. I liked the way he shot first and made no apologies later. I loved how in the end, everyone thought he’d abandon them, but instead, he came back in the nick of time and saved the day.

The scoundrel is a wily hero. He’s hard to justify, but even harder to resist. He’s charming and clever and when he’s bad, he’s oh-so-bad. He’s Rhett Butler. He’s Danny Ocean. Or even better, he’s Danny Burnett, the hero of this book and the third brother in my Legendary Lovers series.

Danny isn’t your typical good guy. He doesn’t have an implacable moral code, and the only time he deals with law enforcement is when they’re after him. Now he’s inherited the infamous Murrieta ring—which means his life is about to undergo a serious change.

And, of course, that means a woman!

I hope you enjoy the story, especially the sweet antics of Black Jack and Lady, two real cats who are looking for their forever home (check out the Blaze Authors’ Pet Project at www.blazeauthors.com for details). As the owner of a rescued cat, I know the joy animals can bring. Please stop by and see me on Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/readjulieleto) or Twitter (@JulieLeto) and, as always, at www.plotmonkeys.com.

Enjoy!

Julie Leto




Too Wicked to Keep

Julie Leto







www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)




ABOUT THE AUTHOR


Over the course of her career, New York Times and USA TODAY bestselling author Julie Leto has published more than forty books—all of them sexy and all of them romances at heart. She shares a popular blog—www.plotmonkeys.com—with her best friends Carly Phillips, Janelle Denison and Leslie Kelly and would love for you to follow her on Twitter, where she goes by @JulieLeto. She’s a born and bred Floridian homeschooling mom with a love for her family, her friends, her dachshund, her lynx-point Siamese and supersexy stories with a guaranteed happy ending.


To all the families who adopt pets…

either from roadsides or shelters like

Furry Friends in Barrie, Ontario. Animals bring

pure joy and light into the lives of so many.




Contents


Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18




1


Five Years Earlier…

REACHING BEHIND HER, Abigail Albertini tried to snag the tiny crystal dangling from the zipper of her white silk cocktail dress. Her shoulders ached. Her neck twinged, and her artfully arranged hair lay heavy at her nape. The day had been so long. Appointments at the salon. Lunch with her bridesmaids. A last-minute meeting with the wedding planner before a pre-rehearsal cocktail hour, a trek to the church and several run-throughs with her family and friends. Then the wedding party had endured a five-course meal at Charlie Trotter’s and a final round of champagne and aperitifs at her father’s Lake Shore mansion, where she was now shedding the last vestiges of her life as a single woman in the room she’d slept in as a child. No wonder people wanted to only get married once. It was hard work.

She bent her arm back farther, trying not to snag her newly polished nails on the metal clasp, when she heard the deep male voice from behind her.

“Need help?”

She spun, her heart hammering.

“David!”

He emerged from the shadows beside her window looking more delicious and debonair than any man had a right to. Dressed in a tuxedo with a loosened collar and tie, he would have fit right in with the guests at tonight’s pre-wedding soiree. Had he been there, blended with the crowd of out-of-town guests, family friends and Chicago elite? Her father had given the security team strict instructions to detain him if he got within two-hundred yards of her, but what chance did former military police have against a man like him?

She’d learned the hard way that what David Brandon wanted, David Brandon got—no matter the danger. No matter the cost.

As he swaggered closer and closer, she thought about screaming or running for the door. Thought, but didn’t act. In that instant of indecision, his nearness ensnared her. Her exhausted nerve endings exploded with keen awareness of his body, of his hands encased in soft kid leather. Of his skin, devoid of cologne, yet rich with an intoxicating scent that was his and his alone.

David Brandon was an expert at getting into places he shouldn’t. He’d breached Abby’s heart that way—what was one Gold Coast bedroom to a thief like him?

“You have to go.”

“Not without you,” he whispered.

She stumbled backward, forcing herself out of the fog his body heat injected into her brain. “Have you lost your mind? You betrayed me, David. You took advantage of me and used me to get your hands on my grandmother’s painting. You used me.”

“I know. I’m sorry. And trust me, I’m never sorry.”

It wasn’t his confession that stopped her retreat, but the pleading in his voice. She shook her head, knowing she must have heard wrong. Why would he beg? Why would he care? He’d taken what he wanted. She had nothing more to give.

“Then don’t be sorry now. I don’t need your pity and I don’t accept your pathetic apology.”

“It may be pathetic, but it’s sincere.”

“What the hell do you know about sincere? Nothing about you is real. Nothing.”

This much she’d learned the hard way. David Brandon, the man who’d come into her life at a time when she was vulnerable and afraid that she was making all the right choices for all the wrong reasons, had been a fraud. A con. He’d crafted his persona specifically to get close to her, to get access to the painting. She knew that now. She knew it all.

He wasn’t sweepingly romantic or achingly suave or deliciously wicked…he was a filthy, thieving liar who’d stolen everything she’d ever valued, from her grandmother’s cherished painting to her faith in her ability to tell the difference between a man who loved her and a man who was out to exploit everything she treasured.

He smoothed a lock of hair off her cheek.

His gloves were cold. “My feelings for you are real. Maybe the first real emotions I’ve ever felt.”

She squeezed her eyes shut, determined not to listen, determined not to make the same mistakes with David just because her body quaked and her breasts felt heavy and tingly with his chest so near to hers.

“Why are you doing this?” she asked, hating the tears blurring her vision as she fought to look him in the eye. “You took what you wanted. There’s nothing left. If I scream, my father won’t just have you arrested. He’ll kill you.”

Despite her threat, David stepped closer until their bodies touched. She whimpered, remembering with intimate clarity how this contact had once made her weak in the knees—how it still took every ounce of her shame not to grab on to him to steady her balance.

“I’m not afraid of your father,” he said, his intense green eyes boring into her like a drill. “I’m not afraid of jail. But if I’m arrested, I won’t be able to get your painting back. And I will, Abby. I swear.”

The empty promise broke the spell. She pushed him away and scrambled to the other side of the room.

“When? And how? If you want to prove something to me, why don’t you have it with you now?”

She didn’t know why she bothered grilling him with questions. Even if he had answers, they’d be lies. A week ago, she would not have doubted him. A week ago, she would have hung on his every utterance, convinced he was on the verge of rescuing her from her privileged, but staid and predictable life. He’d promised to sweep her into an epic romantic adventure where they’d spend their days exploring the world’s finest art museums and their nights making love in penthouses from Paris to Morocco to Prague.

But those dreams had been nothing but pretty pictures painted to earn her trust—and access to the portrait she’d refused to ever part with.

“It’s already been fenced,” he said. “I had to finish the job. But I’ll track it down. I’ll return it to you, I promise. It’ll be my wedding gift to you.”

Her stomach roiled. Even if David made good on his promise, Marshall would never allow the painting into their home now that he knew the truth about her own part in this grand betrayal.

“Haven’t you given us enough? Like pain? Misery?”

David skewed his face in disgust. “I’m not talking about you and that stiff.”

“That stiff has a name—a real name,” she defended. “He inherited it from his grandfather and it stands for integrity and honesty and, remarkably, for forgiveness. Tomorrow, it will be my name, too. I’ll spend the rest of my life making up for what I did, David. Will you?”

He answered her question with a curse.

“You can’t marry him.”

His voice was so definitive, Abby couldn’t help but laugh.

“I not only can,” she said, determination straightening her spine in ways it hadn’t in a long time, “I will. I love him. And I don’t know why he didn’t toss me to the curb when I told him about us, but I’m taking this second chance, and this time, I’ll get it right.”

His eyes widened. “You confessed?”

“Of course I confessed! Did you think I’d cover up because I was ashamed? You probably counted on that. But I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t lie anymore. I told him everything. I told him how we met at the foundation fundraiser. I told him how you knew so much about me, how you plied me with champagne and lured me into the museum’s Renaissance art collection. I even told him how you compared me to Titian’s Diana and you to the brave Actaeon, and how I couldn’t think straight and how I forgot all my promises and responsibilities and got caught up until I didn’t know how to stop from ruining everything.”

The words tumbled from her as if spiked with shards of shattered glass. She covered her mouth with her hands.

David dropped onto the edge of her bed. “I can’t believe you told him everything.”

His voice was a whisper, not of surprise, but shock. Maybe even hurt.

She didn’t care. She couldn’t care. His strategy had been artfully planned and executed, playing to her every weakness, her every fantasy.

But she’d learned the hard way that life wasn’t about schoolgirl dreams or grand romantic affairs. It was about living. Loving.

Trusting.

“I couldn’t live with the lies. Unlike you, I believe people should have the whole truth about someone before they make a serious decision. Marshall didn’t have to honor our engagement. He could have…he should have called the whole thing off. But he didn’t. He’s a real man who loves me enough to forgive me. And I love him. I always have and I always will.”

David stood, his head shaking from side to side as if he was trying to process all she’d said. But how could he? He didn’t have the capacity to understand things like love and compassion and honesty and forgiveness. If he had, he never would have sought her out in the first place.

Then he went still, took a deep breath and met her confused stare with clear, determined eyes.

“My name’s not David.”

Her heart fell, even though this news came as no surprise, not after all the searches she’d done after he’d disappeared with her painting.

“Who are you, then?”

He hesitated.

The momentary pause acted like an explosion of awareness. She’d made the right choice in confessing to Marshall. She’d made the right choice in accepting his forgiveness and pushing her leftover feelings for David Brandon—or whatever his name was—out of her heart.

The truth did not come easily to this man—and it never would.

He’d come into her life at precisely the wrong time. Just out of graduate school and only a few months into her first job, she was staring down at a future that had been mapped out for her from before she was born. Until she’d met him, she’d never questioned any of it. She’d willfully stepped onto the path of her life, never straying, never questioning, never doing anything her family would be ashamed of, even if she had fantasized about dangerous adventures and sensual sins.

Then he’d shown up. He’d offered her a taste of the very things that had always been forbidden—and for that, she’d paid a high price.

“Tell me your real name.”

“Daniel,” he replied. “Daniel Burnett.”

“And you’re from?”

“Anywhere,” he said, shaking his head. “Nowhere. Doesn’t matter, Abby. Nothing matters. Not if you’re really going to marry him. I made a lot of mistakes, but the worst was falling in love with you.”

She snorted, not caring that it was unattractive and unladylike. “That was your biggest error? The so-called falling-in-love part? Not the lying or the scheming or the fact that you took the one thing my grandmother left me when she died?”

“No, that’s not what I meant. That was wrong, too. All of it. But it’s what I do. It’s who I am…or who I was, before I met you.”

She glared at him, willing herself to ignore how sincere he looked, how broken.

“And you expect me to believe that after all those carefully crafted lies, you’re now telling me the truth? You’re reformed? Just like that?”

“No. I mean, yes, I want you to believe me. I need you to believe me. I’m not reformed. I don’t know if that’s even possible, but I do love you.”

She contained a bitter chuckle. God, how had she become so jaded so fast?

Falling for a liar like Daniel Burnett had definitely helped.

“And why should I believe anything you say, Daniel?” she asked, putting a searing emphasis on the name the first time it passed her lips.

“I can’t stop thinking about you.”

“That’s just your conscience.”

“No, that can’t be it.”

“Probably not, since I doubt you even have a conscience.”

“I probably don’t. At least, not one I’ve paid any attention to for a long time. When I do a job, I do a job. I get what I came for, I sell it for the highest price and I walk away. It’s what I do. It’s what I’ve done my whole life. But suddenly, that’s changed. I can’t get you out of my mind. I can’t stop thinking about what I did. Remorse is an emotion I’ve avoided my entire life, and yet that’s gotta be what I’m feeling, right? That has to mean something.”

Abby took a bold, if shaky, step toward the door. This conversation was over. This situation was over. “It means you crossed the line this time, Daniel. It means you went too far. If you want to find my grandmother’s painting and return it, that’s up to you. But I want no part of it—no part of you.”

She reached for the doorknob, but he intercepted her.

“You loved me,” he insisted.

Just a short time ago, his hand on hers would have felt exciting, wicked, thrilling.

Now, it just felt foreign.

And wrong.

“I loved the idea of you. I loved the secrecy and the illicit sex. It was like a drug. But I never meant to hurt anyone. You did. If not for this sudden burst of conscience, you would have walked away without a second thought. I may never forgive myself for my part in this mess, but Marshall has forgiven me. He trusts me to never make that mistake again. That’s what love is, David or Daniel or whoever you are. Maybe someday, you’ll learn about real love, but it won’t be from me.”

Though she didn’t want to, she took one last look at him, with his dark, swarthy skin, close-cropped hair and twinkling green eyes—which had, in the uncertain light, lost their clever confidence. Every muscle, every fiber, every bone in her body ached for him, but she pushed the empathy aside. She couldn’t care about his pain. She couldn’t even believe it existed. Nothing about him was real.

“I’m going to go ask my mother to help me out of this dress. If you’re not gone by the time we get back, I will call the police and I will make sure you’re prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”

“Abby, please,” he began, but he stopped when she turned her back and snatched the doorknob.

And with more power and will than she ever thought she possessed, Abby walked away.




2


Present Day…

“IF YOU NEED SOMETHING slick to rub on there, I think I have just the thing.”

Daniel Burnett stopped tugging at the ring caught on his knuckle. He must have looked like a moron, sitting in a New Orleans casino, tugging at his finger as if the gold band was cutting off his circulation. He couldn’t imagine why any woman would proposition him under these circumstances, especially since he probably looked like a schmo trying to hide the evidence of his marital status.

But when he looked up at the woman behind the sultry proposition, he nearly slid right off the bar stool.

Everything about her was different. Her hair, once a straight, unadorned brown, now glimmered with striking copper highlights. Amber eyes once muted behind square-shaped red-framed glasses now flashed from the center of long, dark lashes. Lips she’d once coated only with balm or a pale gloss were now outlined and plump with a rich cognac shade that made him crave a burning, fortifying sip.

“Abby?”

She arched a brow. “Wow, and here I thought you wouldn’t recognize me after all these years.”

“I’d know you anywhere.”

The words were out before he could stop them, before he could put a lid on the Pandora’s box of emotions flying through him. He never thought he’d see her again—never wanted to. He’d avoided taking any jobs in Chicago—hell, he avoided the whole Midwest altogether. He’d survived Abby once, but barely. A woman like her was lethal.

Dangerous.

Gorgeous.

He grabbed his jacket from the back of his chair and shrugged into it. He eyed the door. His flight wasn’t leaving for another six hours, but maybe he’d be smart to head out to the airport now. Maybe he’d rent a car and drive back to California.

Or maybe he’d just crawl under a rock.

She leaned in close so that her breath, sweet with mint, caressed the skin on his neck and ear. “Come on, Daniel. After all these years, you’re not going to at least tell me how beautiful I look?”

This was the advantage of meeting up again with a woman who already knew you were an asshole. He could look his fill and she wouldn’t think any less of him—it wasn’t possible. She took a step back, hooked one hand onto her slim waist and waited while he drank in the whole delectable picture.

He deserved this. The torture of dragging his gaze up her long, tanned legs cut at his core. Her curved hips, trim waist and slim belly taunted him so that he nearly squeezed his eyes shut before he reached her sweet, round breasts. But as much as he wanted to look away, he couldn’t.

The flavor of her skin danced on the memory of his tongue. The sound of her pleasured moans echoed through his dreams. The feel of her lips lingering on every intimate part of him was like a chained ghost, haunting him with the sins of his past.

The irony that Abigail Albertini would show up in New Orleans the very night Danny had done the first good deed in his life couldn’t be denied. He glanced at the stupid ring his brother had shoved onto his finger less than an hour ago, as a reward for Danny’s help in rescuing Michael’s lover from a crazed rapist. His younger brother had spouted some nonsense about how the two-hundred-year-old heirloom would change his life, but Danny hadn’t believed a word.

Now he wasn’t so sure.

“Like what you see?” she asked boldly.

He tried not to groan as she twisted sideways so that the full impact of her curves hit him like a battering ram.

He reached for his drink.

“Marriage agrees with you,” he muttered.

The edge of her mouth quirked at the corner. “Thank you.”

As much as he didn’t want to look, Danny made a quick survey of the bar. He’d never met Marshall Chamberlain, so he just looked for any man whose veins were popping out of the side of his skull. That’s what he’d look like if the guy who’d tempted his fiancé to cheat on him had suddenly appeared in their vicinity. But none of the guys nursing their beers or strolling through the casino looked the least bit interested in him or Abby.

Danny clicked his tongue. The guy really was a moron. If he had a wife as passionate, beautiful and barely reined as Abby, he’d never let her out of his sight.

Of course, he didn’t have a wife like Abby and that was no one’s fault but his own.

“So,” he said, wanting to put himself out of his misery sooner rather than later. “Where is the lucky guy? I never did offer my congratulations on your nuptials.”

“That’s probably best, don’t you think?”

“I’m not known for doing what is best,” he reminded her.

“Sure you are,” she said, sliding on the bar stool beside him and signaling for the bartender. “As long as it’s best for you. Trust me, you and Marshall running into each other would not have been good for anyone.”

While she ordered a bottle of champagne, Danny swigged the last of his scotch and wondered how the hell the past couple of days had gone from bad to worse. First, he’d left California for Louisiana, hoping to find his brother Michael and maybe make good on his plan to steal their father’s ring, sell it and use the profit to start a new life somewhere fresh…or at least, somewhere that didn’t have Wanted posters with his name on them.

The Netherlands, perhaps? Outer Botswana?

But once he’d arrived in the Crescent City, he’d ended up helping his brother, an FBI agent, solve a case and save the woman he loved. On top of that mess, Michael had ended up giving Danny the damned ring voluntarily, which took all the fun out of it.

For revenge, the stupid gold-and-emerald heirloom was now nearly cutting off the circulation in his right hand. And as the pièce de résistance, the one woman who’d broken his heart had, for some unknown reason, now traveled cross-country to rub his nose in her long and happy marriage.

This was karma. It had to be.

“So, what are you doing here, so far from the man who stole you away from me?”

She laughed, but there was no trace of humor in those brandy-colored irises.

“Is that how you remember things? Because as I recall, you were the one who did all the stealing.”

Five years of time and distance, plus wearing, even under duress, his infamous ancestor’s ring, gave him the balls to snag her by the waist and pull her in close.

Five years of marriage gave her the confidence to remain still, a curious grin playing on her lips while she waited to see what he’d do next.

Those five years did not, however, protect him from the instantaneous slam of need that exploded through his system from the scent of her perfume and the silky warmth of her skin.

“You stole my heart,” he murmured.

She twisted away from him, but she probably hadn’t even heard him over the music and clanging sounds of the casino. “You lost the right to touch me a long time ago.”

He leaned back into his chair. Maybe if he exuded his typical casual air, the heartbeat ramming against his chest wouldn’t be so obvious.

She hadn’t meant to lose her cool. Danny could see the combination of anger and shock in her eyes. But her intense reaction proved one thing—she hadn’t gotten over him. Maybe she still hated him. Maybe she spent every day cursing his name. But at least she hadn’t forgotten him. That was something.

“You’re right.” He took another drink, grateful for the smooth burn of the scotch as it slid down his throat. “But you know exactly who I am, Abby. If you wanted to rub my face in how hot you look after five years of marriage, then you’ve accomplished your goal. If you want to slap my face or have me arrested, then go ahead.” He leaned forward, his newly acquired ring glittering on his hand. “But don’t parade that luscious body of yours so close to mine and expect me to keep my hands off. Every man has his limits. Even me.”

“I’m counting on you to push past those limits, then,” she said stiffly.

For the first time, he caught a glimpse of the haughty, privileged princess he’d met five years ago. But only a glimpse.

“What are you talking about?”

“I came here to find you.”

“And your husband let you? What is he, a moron?”

“Don’t speak that way about Marshall,” she shot back. “He was a good man who didn’t deserve what I did to him.”

Was?

Danny stood. “No, he didn’t deserve any pain we caused him.”

She pressed her mouth into a tight line—a line Danny couldn’t help but want to breach. On a normal day, at a normal hour, Abigail was a classic Mediterranean beauty, with her thick, dark hair, smooth olive skin and expressive amber eyes. But when she was angry—when she let her control slip even a little—she knocked the breath from his lungs.

“Very true,” she conceded. “But I didn’t expect to hear compassion from Daniel Burnett, or is it David Brandon again?”

“I haven’t been David Brandon for—” He cut his claim short. He’d actually used the name the day before. He’d developed a habit of trying it every so often, to see if the pain of losing Abby had lessened any in the years since she’d kicked him out of her life.

It hadn’t.

“Why’d you come looking for me?”

His voice was as strangled as the skin beneath his ring finger. Her mouth curved into a tiny smile—the first one that flashed all the way up to her irises. His pain gave her pleasure. He couldn’t blame her.

She sidled closer, then danced the tips of her fingers up his shirt, from his waistband to his collar. “I have a job for you.”

With a flick of her nail up the underside of his chin, a fire sparked through Danny’s body that made him want to drown himself in the moisture of her mouth. She was taunting him. Making him pay, one hormone at a time, for nearly destroying her future.

He not only didn’t blame her—he wanted more.

His brain might have registered all the reasons why he should stay half a country away from Abigail Albertini Chamberlain, but his dick hadn’t gotten the memo. Blood rushed down so fast, Danny had to grab the edge of the bar to keep from losing his balance.

“No way.”

“You owe me,” she said.

“So? You’re playing with fire, Abby. I can’t promise you won’t get burned again. And this time, Marshall won’t forgive you. I wouldn’t.”

“You wouldn’t have the first time.”

She took her time tracing her fingers up his neck and then tousling the strands of hair at his temples. When her gaze locked with his, he saw none of the naive, uncertain girl she used to be.

She was all woman now—and she had something up her sleeve, figuratively speaking. Something that wasn’t going to be good—at least, not for him.

“No,” he conceded. “I wouldn’t have forgiven you.”

“Good,” she said, pushing away from him and snatching the flute of champagne the bartender had delivered. “Then you haven’t changed. I’m counting on you being the same lowlife, conscienceless thief you used to be.”

He forced a chuckle. “Why would you hope for that?”

She sipped her champagne. After enjoying half the glass, replete with appreciative hums and slides of her tongue over her rich, luscious lips, she put the flute back onto the bar and stretched up onto her tiptoes to whisper in his ear.

When she did, her breasts brushed against his chest. The sensation caused a domino effect of ignitions that sparked his every nerve ending.

“Because I’ve found my painting and I need you to make good on your promise and steal it back.”




3


ABBY SPUN ON HER four-inch heels, grabbed the bottle of champagne out of the ice bucket and started her hip-swinging parade out of the hotel bar. She measured her steps and the rhythm of her walk. She needed him to follow. She needed him to prove he wasn’t so much of a scoundrel that he’d break the last promise he made to her before he’d disappeared.

She supposed she could have offered him money. She had plenty of it, not that it had helped her thus far in averting a scandal for her family. She’d thought about offering her forgiveness, but she wasn’t sure he cared about it or that she had any to give. Time, distance and four years of marriage to a man who loved her had lessened the sting. She was still pissed off at Danny for nearly wrecking her life, but she no longer wanted to curl into a whimpering ball of loss and regret.

But he probably didn’t need her money, and if he cared one bit about forgiveness, he would have made good on his vow to retrieve the painting years ago. If she wanted him to follow now, she was going to offer him something she hoped he still craved—a chance to win her back.

It wasn’t going to happen, of course. She might have put on her sexiest dress and flown across the country to lure him back to Chicago, but she wasn’t going to sleep with him. She’d been there, done that and had the heartache to prove it.

Though she had to admit—he was still hot.

She knew better than anyone that any living, breathing woman within close proximity to David Brandon, aka Daniel Burnett, would be subject to a raging surge of lust. But while she’d come here anticipating a tug of attraction from the leftover riptides of their fast and furious affair, she hadn’t expected to nearly drown.

The minute she’d seen him from across the crowded casino, she’d fallen backward in time. Her nerve endings had sizzled and her brain, conditioned over the past five years to block out the memory of the night he’d approached her for the first time in a darkened museum gallery, had betrayed her with pImages** vibrant with sex and sensuality. From that first whispered innuendo, he’d turned her inside out, exposing the desires she’d kept so carefully hidden from everyone in her life, her fiancé included.

But she was older now. Stronger. She’d tried other avenues to reclaim her painting before it exposed her family—mostly her father—to derision and ridicule.

Lust aside, she couldn’t allow her fears to stop her plan. It wasn’t a wise plan. It certainly wasn’t remotely ethical. But that ship had sailed a long time ago. Trying to reclaim her good-girl status now was like trying to win back her virginity. The only thing she had left from her days before Daniel had charmed his way into her life was her reputation. If she didn’t act soon, that would be at risk, too.

“Abby, wait.”

His voice traveled over the retreating sounds of the casino, but she didn’t break her stride. The doors from the lobby to the street slid open, blasting her head to toe with cool night air that had, only hours before, clung to her with the warm, wet heat that made Louisiana so infamous. Tracking Daniel down to New Orleans had been no small feat. She might never have found him if he hadn’t made the unexpected mistake of getting himself arrested in California. “Abby!”

He grabbed her arm and his touch was electric. The sensation of his palm wrapped around her wrist ratcheted up her heartbeat until she was certain he could feel her pulse. She tried to yank herself free, but he held her fast.

“Let go of me.”

“We need to talk.”

He pressed his thumb intimately on her pulse point. The pounding intensified in her ears and heat suffused her system until tiny beads of sweat trickled at her nape and between her breasts. Her brain flashed with a memory. The two of them, naked, in front of her fireplace. Ice cubes. His thirsty tongue.

She pulled harder. “Don’t touch me.”

His face twisted with confusion, but he instantly let her go.

“What the hell, Abby? You came on to me back there, not the other way around. Now I can’t lay a hand on you just to stop you from running?”

“I wasn’t running,” she said, gulping in air. “And yes, that’s the deal.”

“What if I don’t agree to the terms?”

She took another deep breath and released it slowly. She hadn’t come here to give him an ultimatum. She’d meant to entice him to do this one favor, to repay her for what he’d put her through. She’d expected residual chemical attraction to him, but she hadn’t expected fear.

“If you won’t help me, I’ll find someone else who will.”

He eyed her warily, but didn’t immediately walk away. She had to get herself together. Remember her endgame. Stick to her plan. She’d banked on Daniel still caring about her. She’d hoped, stupidly perhaps, that he’d cultivated a bit of real remorse since she’d left her bedroom the night before her wedding with her dress unzipped and Daniel long gone.

“Why do you need the painting all of a sudden?”

“The man who owns it now plans to not only display it, but auction it off. I have less than a week to get it back before everyone knows about my grandmother and her affair with that artist.”

“I don’t get it,” Daniel said, his voice doubtful. “You’re the original owner. If he puts it on display, the whole world will know it was stolen.”

“After you took it, I never reported it stolen. My father hated that portrait. To him, it’s salt in the wound of his mother cheating on his father and all the years of bullying and taunting he suffered through as a kid because of it. He’s had years to forget about that pain, and now it’s going to be dragged up again because I let you steal it. My grandmother gave the painting to me to keep it safe, to keep our family secrets just that.”

“Why didn’t she destroy it?”

Abby’s blood heated. “I don’t know,” she lied. “Maybe she appreciated the artist’s talent. Maybe she intended to keep it as financial insurance. All I know is that I was supposed to keep the painting out of the public eye. Once this collector shows it, art historians will trip over themselves trying to figure out who the subject is. She was the wife of a prominent Chicago businessman. Her picture dominated the society columns every other day. It won’t take long for our family secrets to be made very public—including mine.”

Daniel snorted. “No one cares about scandals anymore, sweetheart. With the publicity, your father can probably double the per-square-foot price of his properties.”

“Do you know how hard it is, still, for someone with the last name Albertini in a city like Chicago? Italian last name? Whispered ties to the old mob? It never really stops, no matter how many charities you fund or legitimate businesses you own and operate without so much as a fine from the IRS. And how do you think my father will feel, personally, when a nude portrait of his mother is all over the papers?”

“As I recall, she was a gorgeous woman.”

Abby growled. “That’s not the point. The painting is proof of an affair my grandmother had with the artist—an affair that has been a family secret for a long time. But people gossiped like crazy and my grandmother’s greatest regret was how those whispers hurt my father, who was just a little kid. I can’t let my mistakes drag out all that old pain again. Besides, once art experts start digging into the painting’s authenticity and history, someone is going to connect the dots about us, too. Ever consider what that kind of publicity will do to your business?”

His eyebrows shot up, but only for a second. “You had an affair with some jerk named David Brandon. No one will connect him to me.”

“Oh, really? I did.”

“I told you who I was.”

“And the police in California made note of that same alias when you were arrested for attempted murder. It won’t take long for a good reporter to make the connections. And I expect it will be hard to sneak into people’s homes or famous museums when your face is splashed all over the latest news feeds. You have as much on the line as I do.”

She turned back to the street, hoping to spot her limousine from the line outside the casino entrance. Maybe this was a mistake. Five years felt like five seconds with Daniel standing so near. The emotions he provoked, from lust to anger to passion to betrayal, rushed at her from every direction.

The deeper she tried to dig herself out of this mess, the worse it got. She’d managed to keep the details of her relationship with Daniel secret from everyone, even her parents. They knew that she’d been duped by a con man, but she’d never told them that she’d slept with him or that she’d practically handed over the safe’s combination when he’d coaxed the story of her grandmother’s rebellious affair with the artist, Bastien Pierre-Louis, out of her.

The only person who knew the whole truth had been Marshall. To him, she’d confessed everything. Not the sordid details—she’d spared him that pain—but she’d been brutally honest about her weaknesses and how Daniel had played to every single one.

And yet, for reasons she’d never completely understand, he’d forgiven her. They’d had to work hard to rebuild their relationship, but in the end, they’d been happy. If her past sins came to light, Marshall’s memory would be tarnished, too. She couldn’t allow that to happen.

She cursed, unable to spot her driver. The delay gave Daniel a chance to walk around in front of her. Though he’d slipped his hands casually into his pockets, his tight jaw and focused stare were anything but relaxed.

“I’m the last person you should ask for help.”

“No, you’re the only person I can ask. You already know the painting’s history and you owe me. It was hard to track you down, but no harder than asking you for help.”

“Do you think staying away from you has been easy? For five years, I’ve pretended you didn’t exist. I let you have your perfect marriage with your perfect man. Now you show up here acting like a sex goddess on the prowl, make me an offer I can’t refuse, but then freak out after one innocent touch? I’m a thief, Abby. Not a monster. I hurt you once. I won’t do it again.”

She swallowed deeply, then straightened her spine, determined to regain her control. He sounded so sincere, but she knew better than to fall for his line, no matter how artfully he delivered it. Daniel Burnett couldn’t be trusted with her emotions. She wasn’t even sure she could trust herself with them.

“I have no reason to believe you,” she said. “But if you agree to help me, I have no choice but to take you at your less-than-reliable word.”

“So we’re both backed into a corner.”

He stretched out his right hand, but stopped just a millimeter shy of touching her cheek. In the span of a heartbeat, his attention shifted from her to the ring on his right hand, the one he’d been trying desperately to get off when she’d first seen him in the bar.

She grabbed the opportunity to change the subject.

“What is that?”

“Recently inherited family treasure.”

He turned his hand so she could see the stone. As jewelry went, it was fairly pathetic. The black opals on the sides were brilliant with bright blues and greens, but the center stone, which caught the marquee lights with more brilliance than she expected, had a huge, zigzagged scratch.

“Maybe you can barter with the collector who has my painting,” she suggested. The two items were nowhere near equal value, but she couldn’t ignore the irony that he now possessed a family treasure when he’d been responsible for stealing hers.

“If I could get the damned thing off my finger. But it’s supposed to bring luck, so to speak, to the men in my family. Could come in handy while I’m breaking my rule of never stealing the same piece of art twice.”

Her heart skipped a beat. “You’re going to help me?”

“Yes, and not because of the threat to my livelihood. You may not believe me, but I’m helping you because it’s the right thing to do.”

His voice inflected with his obvious disbelief, but before she could question his sincerity, he gestured gallantly toward the line of limousines and gave her a little bow, as if inviting her to lead the way.

Her shoes were rooted to the sidewalk.

“Without any expectations?”

He looked up at the dark night sky as if asking for divine intervention. “Really, woman, when you have the advantage, take it and run.”

Abby opened her mouth to object, but then decided to quit while she was ahead. The hard part of this operation, apparently, was not getting Daniel on board—but keeping him from running roughshod over her.

She had to stay focused. Eyes on the prize.

And hands off the merchandise.

She finally spotted her limo. With a nod to the driver, she slid into the backseat, adjusting her skirt as the car dipped slightly while Daniel climbed in beside her. Despite the roominess of the interior, he sat as close to her as he could.

The driver slammed the door.

“There’s space in this car for eight people,” she said. “Feel free to spread out.”

He made that clicking sound with his tongue. “Thanks, but I’m fine here.”

She’d had no illusions that he’d make this easy, but she was up to the challenge. She had to be.

She gave the driver instructions to take them straight to the airport, and then didn’t object when Daniel closed the glass partition.

“Should we stop anywhere to retrieve your things?” she asked.

“You can buy me whatever I need.”

“What you need most can’t be bought,” she quipped.

He chuckled. “Clever. So you’ve developed a sharp tongue since last we met?”

“I’ve developed a lot of things. I was a child when last we met.”

He turned so that his body, so close, faced hers. “You were a lot of things, Abigail Alexandra Albertini, but a child you were not.”

She didn’t remember ever telling him her alliterative middle name, but his casual use of it reminded her how much more he knew about her than she did about him.

To find Daniel Burnett, she’d had to employ several private investigators. Each one had provided tidbits of his past, disjointed and disconnected, until she’d pieced them together into an incomplete picture of his life.

His mother had turned him over to family services when he was five years old. She’d died of a drug overdose about a year later. He’d been shuttled from foster home to foster home until he was ten, when he’d landed with the Burnett family, who’d adopted him. His juvenile record included multiple counts for petty theft and trespassing, but by the time he turned eighteen, his name disappeared from arrest records. He’d been interviewed about a few cases in his early twenties and the name Daniel Burnett had dominated watch lists for museums, collectors and auction houses worldwide since, but he had never been prosecuted, not even after a security guard was seriously injured at the site of his last job.

When she combined what she’d learned from her private investigators with what she knew from their affair, the idea that he’d nearly killed someone struck her as unlikely. Even after he’d betrayed her trust in the worst possible way, Daniel was a lover, not a fighter. She couldn’t believe he’d try to kill someone.

“What happened in California?” she asked.

“I grew up in California,” he answered. “Many things happened there.”

“I mean your arrest.”

“Rethinking your decision to tap me for the honor of retrieving your stolen property?” he asked, his eyes glittering with his tease—one likely meant to divert her line of questioning.

“No,” she said. “It’s just that part of your appeal as a thief is that up until a couple of months ago, you’d never seen the inside of a jail cell for more than a few hours. And you definitely never hurt anyone.”

“You’ve checked up on me?”

“Of course,” she replied.

“Smart girl,” he admitted. “You probably won’t believe this, but I was set up for that mess in California.”

“By whom?”

He leaned back into the seat and eyed her again, this time warily. Had he not expected her to take him at his word?

“Might have been you, now that I think about it. You couldn’t see me jailed for what I did to you, so maybe you arranged for me to be railroaded for something else.”

She shook her head. “There’s a huge flaw in that logic.”

“Really?”

“Oh, yes. If I was going to frame you for a crime, I’d do it in Illinois, not California. We don’t have the death penalty, so you’d have to suffer longer.”

He snickered at her joke and she was surprised she’d made it. She was supposed to be angry at him, or at least wary of him. But in the span of twenty minutes, she’d already started meeting his teases with her own.

“Do you think the person who set you up is still out to get you?” she asked, returning the conversation to her most serious concern.

“Nah,” he said. “But it’s sweet that you’re worried about me.”

This time, her laugh was a burst of genuine humor. “I’m not worried about you. I’m worried about someone getting in the way of you retrieving my painting. The collector has already sent out invitations to art lovers all around Chicago, promising to reveal an unknown work by Bastien Pierre-Louis next week. The buzz in local circles is getting louder every day. This operation needs to be quick and simple. No complications.”

Daniel laughed, retrieved two glasses from the limousine’s bar and then commandeered the champagne she’d taken from the casino and poured. “Then you’re out of luck, sweetheart. If you don’t want complications, you picked the wrong man.”




4


FROM A SEAT IN the back of Abigail’s private jet, Danny watched her move up the aisle and marveled at how much she’d changed—and how much she had stayed the same. She was still beautiful and slim, still graceful and minimal in her movements, still sweet and charming as she spoke in hushed tones to her pilot and copilot, who nodded and smiled with deferential respect when she was facing them, but checked out her ass when she left the cockpit.

Shifting in his seat, Danny made eye contact. Their hungry grins vanished. The captain tipped his hat and then quickly shut the door.

Danny had no right to feel territorial. He had no business thinking about how smooth Abby’s skin had been underneath his touch for that brief moment, or how her aversion to contact now reminded him of how skittish she’d been five years ago, how hard he’d had to work to get past her considerable defenses. Even after he’d tempted her into his bed, she would have rather bitten through her lip than make too much noise. Her idea of down-and-dirty sex was doing it standing up.

He had a hard time reconciling that shy, repressed young woman with the vixen now sashaying up the aisle as if she meant to torture him with what he could not have.

And on this, she was succeeding.

She slid into the leather seat across from his, her skirt riding up an extra inch or two that the dress simply didn’t have to give.

“Want anything before we take off?” she asked.

Oh, he wanted a lot of things—none of which he was going to get anytime soon.

Still, he made a show of glancing around the cabin. “No flight attendants?”

“Just the pilot and copilot.” She clicked her seat belt and waited for Danny to do the same. “We have a lot to talk about. I didn’t want to be disturbed.”

He stretched out his legs so that they were inches from hers. “Sure that’s the only reason you wanted to be alone? To talk?”

She ignored his question. “Who hired you to steal the painting five years ago?”

“Why?”

“Anatomy of a crime,” she explained. “By the time we arrive in Chicago, I want to know everything you do about what happened to my painting.”

“I thought you knew who had it.”

“I do. Or at least, I think I do,” she clarified. “His name is Harris Liebe.”

Danny shrugged. He’d never heard the name before—and this was odd. The fraternity of art collectors who purchased off the black market wasn’t that extensive.

“Never heard of him.”

“Neither have a lot of people. But his little announcement has piqued the interest of the legitimate art world. Bastien Pierre-Louis’s work has been experiencing a resurgence in the last decade. Every year leading up to what would have been the man’s one-hundredth birthday increases the value of his pieces, particularly the unsigned ones he gave away during his lifetime.”

“Like your grandmother’s.”

“Precisely like hers. She was the daughter of a wealthy New York businessman with supposed ties to the mob. My great-grandfather, her father-in-law, had similar connections in Chicago, though his son was legitimate. The whole twisted tale makes the painting worth more than even I could afford.”

“And that’s why your family never insured it?”

“I wanted to. Because I curate for so many private collectors, I have contacts with people who would have been very discreet. But my father wanted no connection to it and asked me not to do anything that would officially connect the painting to our family. And after you took it,” she said, the words shooting out of her mouth like bullets from a twenty-two, “my father asked me not to call the police. He hated that painting. I think he was glad someone took it.”

Now, this was a piece of information Danny would file away for later. He’d never met Abby’s parents, but assumed they’d hate him on sight. If he were a father, he certainly would. But maybe there was a chance, even if it was a long shot, that he’d find a way into the real estate titan’s good graces. Everything about this situation was doomed for failure, but he’d survived most of his life because of his inability to take no for an answer.

“How does your father feel now that the painting is going to be publicly displayed?”

She looked askance. “He doesn’t exactly know.”

“How’d you pull that off?”

“I arranged for my mother to have a sudden need to spend alone time with him in their Italian villa. They’ll be gone for two more weeks.”

Danny leaned back in his seat. “Impressive.”

“I’ve learned to cover all my bases, which is why I need to know everything you know about the collector who paid you to seduce me.”

Danny shook his head. He’d deflect blame for a lot of his misdeeds, but not that one. “That part was entirely my idea. I mean, look at you. Can you blame a guy?”

Her sneer wasn’t nearly as biting as she intended. “Tell me what you know about the first collector.”

He gave up trying to postpone this part of the conversation. He wasn’t used to discussing his business practices with anyone, much less someone he’d used them against.

“The story isn’t that exciting. A collector contacted me, told me about the painting and offered me a shitload of money to steal it.”

“And how does one go about contacting you?”

“Word of mouth.”

“Whose word? Whose mouth?”

That secret he wasn’t sharing. “An associate who takes care of moving my merchandise to the collectors who’ve requested it.”

“So this person is a fence?”

He arched a brow. Abby was nothing if not thorough.

“She’s also a legitimate art appraiser,” he explained, “so she runs in a lot of circles, maybe even some of yours. The collector got word to her that he was interested in hiring me for a job. I met with his representative, who paid my retainer after we negotiated a timetable and a total price. The deal was sealed with a handshake.”

She chuckled humorlessly. “Sounds so clean and professional.”

“It is what it is,” he shot back.

Danny had never defended his lifestyle to anyone before. He’d never needed to. Approval or disapproval of how he made his living had never mattered to him. And even though Abby was now hiring him for the very reasons she sneered at, he knew she’d never approve. How could she, after what he’d done?

“Does your husband know you tracked me down?” he asked, wondering why a smart guy like Marshall Chamberlain would allow his wife to seek him out, particularly while wearing that little black dream of a dress.

He watched her cheek hollow as she sucked on the inner flesh.

That would be a no.

And yet, she replied, “I’d like to think so.”

He glanced at her hand.

She wasn’t wearing a ring.

“Wait a minute.”

Since she’d shown up at the casino, she hadn’t answered a single question about her husband. Until now, he’d figured she was on a secret mission, hoping to keep Marshall from having to relive the incident that almost waylaid their wedding.

But she hadn’t mentioned Marshall at all. In fact, the only time the man had come up in conversation was when Danny had asked.

He leaned forward and gazed purposefully into her eyes, his chest tightening as she tried to keep her face impassive and cool. She was biting the inside of her mouth again, but instead of making her mouth look pinched or prissy, her lips puckered in a way that tugged at his heart.

“What aren’t you telling me?” he asked.

“About a gazillion things that are none of your business,” she snapped.

“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.

He settled in across from her and popped the cork.

She didn’t speak until he offered her a glass, which she accepted, though she didn’t take a sip. “You stole more than a thing from me, Daniel.”

Her voice was barely audible, yet sharp as a knife.

“I know.”

“I want it back,” she said.

“I told you. I’ll do whatever it takes to get the painting for you.”

She stared at him with such intense focus, he nearly looked away. “That’s not what I meant. I want what you took from my heart. Think you can find that, too?”




5


THE MINUTE THEY LANDED, Abby wrapped herself up in the minutiae of getting them from the airport to her apartment without more than minimal conversation. Though she’d tried to dig a little deeper into what had transpired five years ago between her and Daniel, he’d skillfully spun the topics away from anything personal. For the duration of their two-hour flight, they’d exchanged little more than small talk.

But that, in itself, was revealing.

Time had not made him cavalier about what had happened between them. He had regrets, which was only fair, since she had them, too.

Outside the casino, Daniel’s touch had blown apart the emotional containment built by Marshall’s unconditional forgiveness. Questions she’d set aside in order to concentrate on her marriage now exploded in her brain. What vulnerabilities had Daniel noticed about her first? How had he breached her understanding of right and wrong so easily? Why had he learned about her secret fantasies when she’d never confessed them to anyone else?

Had he ever really loved her?

For so long, she hadn’t cared about what Daniel felt. She’d concentrated only on Marshall’s love, which she’d cherished. But now she needed answers. Moving on would require them, and more than anything, she wanted to put her past to rest so she could live again—and hopefully, someday, love again. And since the collector who had her painting would show the work to the public in a little over a week, she only had until then to close this chapter of her life for good.

But instead of deconstructing the foundation of their affair, she and Daniel had spent the rest of the flight sipping wine and talking about his newly discovered brothers.

Or rather, his newly acknowledged brothers. He’d actually known about them both long before either Alejandro, the Spanish auction-house owner, and Michael, the FBI agent, learned about him—a fact that pretty much summed up the man she was counting on to save her family from humiliation. To keep the upper hand, Daniel made it his business to know everything he could about any nemesis, even when his “nemesis” was a blood relative…or a woman he’d once claimed to love.

Luckily, she had honed her own information-gathering skills since they’d last met. From her private investigators, she’d learned about his arrest and subsequent release from jail. But from Daniel, she’d found out that he no longer thought Alejandro was a stuck-up prick, and that he’d gone to New Orleans to steal the ring he was now wearing, but instead had helped Michael rescue two women from a psychotic rapist.

“So are you going to tell your brothers where you are?” she asked, hunting in her clutch bag for the keys as her driver pulled up to the covered awning in front of her apartment. Though she’d downsized from the brownstone Marshall’s parents had leased to them during her marriage, she was eternally grateful that she’d picked a place with more than one bedroom. Inviting Daniel into Marshall’s house would not have been right. Putting Daniel up in a hotel would make planning his theft too difficult. She needed to keep him close—but not too close.

“No,” he replied, folding his arms against the blast of Chicago cold.

She hurried to the front entrance so they could get out of the frigid wind. “Don’t you think you should?”

“Why?”

Abby keyed in the code to her building, then waited while Daniel swung open the door. At nearly three in the morning, the doorman had left his post and the chilled October air sliced through her skin. She rubbed the gooseflesh from her arms while they hurried across the marble lobby to the elevators.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t have siblings.”

“What about that friend of yours?”

She stopped up short. “You remember Erica? You never met her.”

“No, but you talked about her all the time. As I recall, she’s like a sister and I bet you don’t check in with her every time you go somewhere.”

“Yes, I do.”

“Did she know you were going to New Orleans?”

“Yes,” she replied haughtily.

“Did she know why?”

She frowned and punched the arrow pointing up. “Not exactly.”

He smirked, and then held back the doors after they slid open.

“Why the secrecy?”

Abby scowled. She’d meant for tonight to be about her eking out painful answers from Daniel—not the other way around.

“I never told her about you.”

She hurried inside, slid her resident key in the slot and programmed the elevator to go to the twenty-first floor. It was late and she was tired. Her mouth felt dry and cottony, a result of two glasses of wine, a high altitude and a lot of talking. She didn’t want to confess to him how she’d hidden her worst mistake from her best friend, even after all these years. They had more important things to discuss—things that weren’t so much about her.

As the elevator shot upward, she grappled with the fact that after researching her thoroughly before he’d gone after the painting, Daniel had obviously not picked up a single newspaper or searched her name through Google since he’d left. He’d had no idea that Marshall had died. He’d had no clue that she’d taken a job as a curator for several private art collections and spent the rest of her time leading tours of Chicago’s great museums for kids from working-class and struggling neighborhoods who might not otherwise have a chance to experience the city’s many artistic and architectural treasures. She led a simple, unexciting life, but one with purpose and meaning.

At least, that’s what he’d said when she told him.

And she wasn’t exactly sure how she felt about his reaction. In a way, she was disappointed that he hadn’t been more…disappointed.

They arrived on her floor and she quietly padded down the carpeted hallway and unlocked her door. The minute she stepped inside, she felt the warm softness of fur curling around her ankles. Lady, her short-haired, dark tortoiseshell cat, had immediately come to greet her while Black Jack, her long-haired male, stared at her from atop her antique china cabinet with his assessing amber eyes.

“Jack! Get down from there.”

The cat, predictably, ignored her.

She tossed her purse aside and scooped Lady into her arms. The loud purring made her smile. When she turned, Daniel stood rooted in the doorway, eyeing her as if she were some sort of alien.

She glanced down at her pet. “Are you allergic?”

“To cats specifically? No. To pets in general? Yeah.”

“But you’re a cat burglar,” she said, snuggling Lady’s furry head beneath her chin. “I assumed you’d love my sweet babies.”

“Nobody says cat burglar anymore.”

“I just did,” she corrected him.

The cat’s soft vibrations of contentedness soothed Abby’s frazzled nerves. She was glad to be home, even if she’d had to bring Daniel with her—even if her life could fall apart in a thousand different ways if her crazy plan to save her family from humiliation failed.

She slipped into the kitchen and checked the food and water bowls, which were full. She grabbed a pouch of cat treats out of the pantry and endured Lady’s impatient mewls on her way back into the living area, where she intended to coax Black Jack down from his perch. She was a little surprised to see Daniel still standing in the hallway warily eyeing her and her cat.

She smirked as she approached him, Lady cradled in her arms. “I can bring you a pillow and blankets if you prefer to sleep in the hall.”

With a grimace, he entered the apartment and shut the door behind him. Lady instantly struggled out of her arms, bounced to the ground and made a beeline for the new guy. Her internal motor turned up to its highest setting, Lady coiled around his legs, basting his pants with her soft, dark fur. He sidestepped with an amazing amount of grace, but he’d met his match. The cat anticipated his moves, and no matter how much dancing he did in the foyer, Lady wouldn’t let him get away.

“What is she, in heat or something?”

“You do have that effect on women,” Abby quipped, shaking the bag of treats up at Black Jack, who seemed much more interested in his companion’s obsession with the new guy than he did in the tuna-flavored crunchies.

“It’s a curse,” Daniel said, balancing on one foot to avoid stepping on Lady’s serpentine tale. “Know how to break it?”

She snorted. If she knew how to fight the allure that was Daniel Burnett, she wouldn’t be in this situation at all, would she?

“Just pet her,” she advised. “If cats think you don’t like them, they never leave you alone.”

“So if you like them, they ignore you?”

“Pretty much.” She slid a footstool to the cabinet and climbed up to collect Black Jack, but he had no interest in coming down. He lifted his big furry body and backed into a corner with a hiss.

“Oh, really?” she challenged, annoyed. Her pets weren’t accustomed to guests of the male persuasion, but she didn’t expect open hostility. “No treats for you, you nasty traitor.”

“Talking to me or the cat?”

Daniel was directly behind her. She gasped, surprised he’d come so near without her hearing him—without her feeling him. He had Lady curled up in his arms, her eyes at half-mast while he scratched her chin. Abby couldn’t remember her cat ever looking quite so hypnotized.

She remembered the sensation very well.

“Give me a second and I’ll get you set up in the guest room,” she said, turning so she could back her way down the stool—but not before he took a bold look at her ass, which was right at his eye level.

“Is that my only option?”

His voice was silk and sensuality, not unlike the sound emanating from the back of her cat’s throat. She allowed herself a split second to fantasize about him caressing her as he did her pet, but then skewered him with an exasperated look that was more for herself than for him.

Daniel exuded sex to strangers. To a woman who’d experienced the skill of his sly hands, wicked tongue and generous mouth, his allure was doubly powerful.

With their shared past, her attraction to him wasn’t rational. It was chemical.

“Unless you want to sleep out here on the couch with the cats, yes, Daniel, that’s your only option.”

“If we skip the sleeping part, do my choices expand?”

His shamelessness was both infuriating and exhilarating. He had no boundaries, no limits. She couldn’t help but laugh. She’d never met anyone like him and she doubted that once he left, she’d ever meet anyone like him again.

At least, not if she could help it.

“Sorry, but that’s the best I can offer.”

He eyed her couch and then the cat, who was now stretching up and burrowing her head beneath his chin. “The guest room will be fine.”

“Good choice. Make yourself at home and I’ll show you around in a few minutes.”

Abby went into her bedroom, kicked off her high heels, then unhooked her earrings as she sauntered into her bathroom to take off her makeup and brush her teeth. Thinking it might not be a good idea to show Daniel into the bedroom while she was still wearing the sexy black dress, she pulled out her most modest pajamas, a full-length top and pants in a hazy pearl silk that she’d gotten from her mother for her last birthday.

She kept the lights off, her ear tuned for any sound of Daniel moving around her apartment, maybe looking through her things, trying to find some clue about her current life that he could use to his advantage.

He could look all he wanted—he wouldn’t find much. When she’d moved out of the brownstone she’d shared with Marshall, she’d left most of her possessions behind. The house had belonged to his family and most of the furnishings had been theirs, too. Shamed by her behavior before the wedding, she’d wrapped herself up in his world, in his things. When he died, she realized how much of herself she’d lost.

Once she’d started to come out of the fog of sadness, she’d decided to get her own place. She’d ignored her mother’s offer to pay for an interior designer, opting instead to fill the apartment herself with furniture and knickknacks that she’d picked out on her own. Even the cats were new, adopted from a shelter. She still had a few things to remind her of Marshall—like the T-shirt he used to wear to bed that she kept in a tissue-lined box in her closet—but mostly, this places was hers and hers alone.

But now, Daniel was here. In her life. In her home. Was he still in her heart, too?

She reached behind to undo the zipper of her dress and nearly jumped out of her skin when her hand met his.

“Here, let me.”

She moved to step away, but stopped. She couldn’t keep running. She’d found Daniel not only so he could help her retrieve her grandmother’s painting, but also so she could face his part in her crazy past and put it to rest. If she couldn’t endure his touch, how would she ever prove to herself that he no longer held sway over her heart, body or soul?




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