Billionaires Prefer Blondes
Read Billionaires Prefer Blondes Online
Authors: Suzanne Enoch
UZANNE
ENOCH
Billionaires
Prefer
Blondes
To my nephew Ryan Connor Byrne,
the newest member of the clan and
excellent at being Giant Attack Baby during playtime.
You’re more effective than Godzilla.
I love you, Ryan!
Samantha Jellicoe liked New York City. Hell, her vagabond shoes…
By the time Richard Addison ushered his minions—as Samantha called…
“I suppose we have you to thank for this?” Richard…
Deep satisfaction ran through Richard as he waited near the…
A horn blared down on the street. Richard blinked, rousing…
Once the police closed Samantha in the back of a…
Richard closed himself in the drawing room with Samantha. She…
“That sucked,” Samantha said, scooping a chopstick’s worth of Chinese…
Richard stood sipping a hot cup of tea and looking…
“So who’s that?” Richard asked, pointing at the plasma television…
Samantha wished she’d worn jogging shoes instead of the five-hundred-dollar…
“This is stupid,” Sam muttered over her shoulder as she…
Obviously his presence on Samantha’s job was causing more difficulties…
Samantha had placed Mrs. Hodges’s diamonds in a velvet bag, taking…
As the limousine stopped at the front steps of the…
“This is nice work,” Richard said, flipping through the three…
Samantha saw Rick sitting in the main, glass-enclosed conference room…
Rick pulled open the front door just as she reached…
“I don’t need to go into the office,” Rick said,…
“Okay, I got them,” Stoney said, grunting as she helped…
While beneath a stand of trees Bono/Eric and Dolph speculated…
Samantha flung herself sideways as Nicholas squeezed the trigger.
“You hang up, too,” Veittsreig said, swinging the gun around…
“I hope you have your key,” Samantha said, hopping up…
“But we would still be in the security consultation business,”…
Tuesday, 2:17 p.m.
S
amantha Jellicoe liked New York City. Hell, her vagabond shoes were longing to stray, just like the song said. The rest of her verses would go a little differently than Sinatra’s, though. She would croon about how the wealthy citizens lived in basic insecurity amid the huddled masses, how all the taxis handily looked the same for timely escapes, and how everyone was so involved in their own crap that they couldn’t be bothered to notice anyone else’s.
And for people like her, who made their livelihood by slipping their vagabond shoes in and out of places they shouldn’t, that made it very close to heaven.
Or rather, she used to make her living by slipping through the shadows and snatching up other people’s very expensive belongings. Not any longer. She was now retired from that business. R-E-T-I-R-E-D. Retired. Which didn’t explain why she was currently standing on the doorstep of one of the
influential elite. All right, she hadn’t entirely retired. She’d just gone legit. She had a day job. Yay, her.
With a slight, professionally considered tilt of her head, she smiled and shook the hand of Mr. Boyden Locke. “Glad I could be of help, Boyden,” she said, still not entirely certain his name hadn’t been designed by some MIT think tank for the purpose of encouraging investors. She would choose something like Samantha Safehouse for herself. “And thank you for the coffee.”
He held on to her hand for a moment too long, undoubtedly his way of letting her know that he was interested in more than her advice. As if she couldn’t have told that from the way he’d chatted with her boobs for the past forty minutes. Mr. Locke probably had no idea what color her eyes were. His were brown, and they shifted toward his valuables when he talked about them.
“No, thank
you
,” he returned. “In my position, it’s impossible to be too cautious. I know the house is badly in need of a security upgrade, but I wanted to make sure I found the right person to handle the job.”
Somehow he made the comment seem vaguely obscene, but Samantha smiled anyway. She had a hunch that her being the right person for the job had more to do with the man with whom she was currently living than with her credentials. But if being associated with Rick Addison brought her business, then so be it. “I’ll write up my recommendations and get them over to you.”
“And I’ll have my people look them over. And you’re welcome to come by for coffee anytime.”
Samantha forced her lips to curve further. “I’ll keep that in mind. You should have my invoice in the next week or so.”
She retrieved her hand and sidled out his door. Once in the clear, Samantha dug into her purse for a tin of Altoids
mints. “Coffee. Blech,” she muttered, popping a pair of the wintergreen-flavored tabs into her mouth.
Apparently she’d do anything in the name of expanding her business, if she had lowered herself to drinking—okay, barely sipping—coffee. At the corner she turned around and surveyed Locke’s house again. Old, elegant, and perfectly located in the old-moneyed East Side, she could see why he’d called to meet with her about his security situation practically the second her flight had landed at La Guardia.
A few years ago she’d hit the house three doors down from him. The Monet inside had netted her a quarter million, and Locke had a Picasso in his drawing room. If the buyer she’d contracted with had preferred modern to Impressionist art, it might very well have been his house she’d hit that night.
His security system was pretty standard, alarms on the doors and windows and sensors on the artwork. For a moment she was tempted to break in through the back door just for old times’ sake before she advised Locke on his upgrade. She could have his Picasso in her hands before he had time to pour himself another cup of coffee. With her luck, though, he’d probably think she was coming on to him.
The phone in her purse rang, interrupting her reverie over the semi-good old days. At the familiar sound of the James Bond theme, she grinned. “Hey, studmuffin,” she said, with her free hand waving down a taxi.
“Your meeting went well, then,” a cool masculine voice replied in a slightly faded British accent.
“You could tell that from three words?”
“Yes. Good is those three words. Bad is five words.”
She chuckled, stepping forward as a yellow cab stopped at the curb. Pulling open the door, she slid in. “Madison and Sixtieth,” she said, shutting the door. “Which five words?”
“Usually it’s ‘Get off my back, bub,’ as I recall.”
“Yeah, but that’s not always about business.”
He gave an unaccustomed snort. “Samantha Jellicoe, I dare you to come over here and say that to me.”
Her mouth went dry. All he had to do was hint about sex, apparently, and she practically had an orgasm. “Randy much?” she joked.
“You have no idea. I actually called, though, to see whether we were still on for dinner tonight.”
“I wouldn’t want to wreck your surprise.”
“I do appreciate that. You’re going shopping?”
Samantha resisted the urge to check the cab for hidden cameras. “Which word gave it away?”
“Madison Avenue, darling. Buy something sexy. And red.”
“I wouldn’t have to keep buying red if you’d stop ripping them off me. And, I have to say, red and sexy would hardly be appropriate for Pauly’s Pizza.”
“We’re not going to Pauly’s Pizza.”
“If you say so. Since you won’t tell me where we
are
going, I’ll just see you tonight,” she said, and clicked the phone closed.
The taxi stopped and she stepped out onto Madison Avenue before she realized that she’d forgotten to ask Rick how
his
meeting was going. “Shit,” she muttered, reaching for her phone again. She dialed his cell.
“Addison,” his voice came, cool and professional.
Oops
. “You’re back in your meeting, aren’t you?” she asked, swearing at herself. Of course he would have called her at his only spare moment.
“I am.”
“Sorry. I just wanted to find out how it was going. How about saying ‘merger’ for great, and ‘stock options’ for fucked?”
For a moment the line was silent. “Merger,” he finally said, humor lacing his deep voice.
“Good. I’ll see you tonight.”
“Certainly. We’ll be talking about our stock optioning then.”
This time he hung up first. She was getting a little better at the couples thing, anyway, though after five months of living with Rick Addison she probably shouldn’t have to remind herself that when he called her, he would be interrupting his own business to ask about hers. Well, there was one way to make up for her slip. “Sexy and red,” she murmured, walking up the street and heading into Valentino.
Two hours later she stood in an alley behind an elegant East Side Manhattan townhouse, her shoes and a very slinky red dress tucked up into a ball beneath her tasteful yellow blouse.
Hm. Four o’clock in the afternoon trying to get into a house that opened onto Central Park wasn’t exactly something for a rookie, but then she hadn’t been a rookie since she’d turned seven and her father had started taking her out for pickpocketing excursions to the park or piazza in whichever city they happened to be.
The butler and two maids and the chef were inside the house, but Samantha had learned their schedule over the last couple of days. At the moment
Dr. Phil
was on, and they’d be in the kitchen, watching. As for the townhouse’s owner, he was in his Manhattan office a mile away, meeting about buying something or other. With a slight smile she pulled from her purse the pair of leather gloves she always carried, slung the handbag across her neck and under one shoulder, and Spider-Manned her way up the old, rough brick wall to the fire escape, jamming her fingers and toes into the minute
gouges in the mortar. Breaking into Locke’s house might be out of the question, but sometimes an itch just needed to be scratched. And she was fairly humming with tension after a day of bored frustration.
Hiking herself over the railing, Samantha trotted up the metal stairs to the third floor. The window at the end of the hallway was shut and locked, of course. Because it was off the fire escape, it was alarmed, as well. The trick, then, was to keep the circuit from being broken. Pulling a metal nail file from her purse, she dug out the silicon seal from around the bottom center panel of glass in the window.
Before she loosened the last bit, she took the small roll of duct tape she always carried and wrapped a length of it backward around her hand. Laying her gloved palm flat on the glass, she made sure she had a good contact, and then gouged out the last bit of sealing with her free hand. The glass panel came free, attached to her glove palm by the tape. She set it aside, picked up the nail file again, and reached inside the window. Pushing the metal file in under the frame to keep the circuits connected, she secured it with another piece of tape, then leaned up and in to unlatch the window. Two seconds later she was inside the house.
Samantha took a moment to frown. That had been way too easy. Somebody was definitely due for a security upgrade.
Easy or not, at least the adrenaline surge took a little of the edge off of nerves that had spent the past two days being polite to people who kept snapping her picture and staring at her chest. Humming to herself, she pulled off her gloves and strolled to the upstairs office to help herself to a Diet Coke from the fridge inside. Halfway through the office door, though, she stopped dead.
A dozen men and women in typical high-class business attire sat around the room, facing the man who stood at the
center. In almost cartoon unison everybody turned to look at her.
Crap, crap, crap
. “Hi,” she said. “Excuse me. Wrong door.” Backing out, she closed the door behind her.
She was halfway down the stairs when the door opened again. “Samantha, stop right there.”
“I’m sorry.” Sam turned on the landing to face the house’s owner. “You said you were at your damn office.”
Richard Addison. British billionaire, businessman, collector, philanthropist, body like a professional soccer player, and eyes bluer than sapphires. And after five months he still apparently had an incurable woody for one former thief. Hot damn.
“And you said you were shopping.” He descended the stairs after her, stopping to lay a palm on her stomach—or where it was under all the padding. “You look good plump.”
Yep, he still thought she was cute, bulges and all. “I had a burger for lunch.”
“And apparently several large buildings, Godzilla.”
“Ha, ha. It’s my dress and shoes.” She lifted her blouse to pull the bundle out from under her clothes. “I told you I went shopping.”
Those deep blue eyes lowered to the bag. “You did buy red.”
“You suggested it. But that was when I thought you were at your office, which you apparently weren’t.”
“I was,” he countered, taking the bag from her and draping it over the banister. “We were on
Extra
last night.”
Samantha scowled at him. “You see? And you said we’d just slip out of the airport, ‘quiet as church mice,’ and spend a couple of low-key days in New York.” She imitated his British accent as she spoke, noting the responding twitch of his sensuous lips.
“Yes, well, apologies. Anyway, half of New York decided to give me a call today to welcome me back. There’s only so much screening a secretary can do when it’s everybody from Trump to Giuliani to Bloomberg to George Steinbrenner ringing me. I got tired of it, so we relocated here.”
“That’s your fault, for being so handsome and rich and famous.” She grinned at him. “Just don’t try to cancel on me for dinner or the auction tonight.”
“How do you know where we’re going?”
She flashed him a grin. “Ben asked me what time we wanted the limo. I wheedled it out of him.”
“Sneak.”
“That’s me, all right.”
“So are you wearing that dress, then?”
“That’s why I bought it.”
Rick edged closer, sliding a hand around her waist and drawing her up against him. “All the better for me. No one will be able to take their eyes off you long enough to bid on any of the artwork.”
“Everybody dresses up for Sotheby’s evening auctions.”
“Not the way you do.” He kissed her, soft and slow. It made her knees weak. “Tell me how you know about Sotheby’s evening auctions.”
“I haven’t hit Sotheby’s in three years, if that’s what you’re implying.” Well, two, anyway, if she counted their London establishment.
“Mm-hm. I’ll be finished in the office by six.” He leaned down and kissed her again, bending her spine back just to let her know that he meant it. His hand crept up beneath her blouse, sliding along the bare skin of her stomach.
Her toes practically curled. “Okay,” she returned, forcing her mind back to matters at hand. “I’m going to grab a snack, then fax Stoney and take a shower.” She brushed his
hand away, slipped out of his arms, retrieved her dress, and continued down the stairs.
Deep satisfaction swirled down her spine to mingle with heady arousal as he headed back up to his office.
Ha
. She’d done it. This was the third time now she’d broken into one of his houses, and this time he hadn’t caught her. He hadn’t suspected a thing.
“Samantha?”
Damn
. She looked back up to the head of the stairs to see him gazing toward the far window with its missing pane. He had good vision, but hell, not that good. “Yes, Rick?” she said, echoing his tone again.
Never give anything away
. That was one of the thieves’ rules as quoted to her by her dad on a regular basis until Martin Jellicoe had ended up in prison and then dead just over three years ago.
“There are a dozen coats and two briefcases in the entryway,” Rick was saying. “How did you pass them by without realizing I was here with company?”
“I was distracted. Have fun with your minions.”
“And why would you walk through the front door and up the stairs with a dress wadded up under your blouse?”
“My hands were full.”
“With that missing windowpane up here, by any chance?” He descended the stairs again. “You broke into the house.”