Billionaires Prefer Blondes (16 page)

At that second, the phone by her haunch rang. The standard ring, not one of the personalized ones she’d given to friends and family.
Crap
.

“You gonna answer that?”

Sending him a glare, she picked the cell up and flipped it open. “
Hola.
”

“You have a policeman in your house, just when I’m expecting my present,” Nicholas Veittsreig’s voice came. “Care to explain that?”

“Hi, sweetie,” she returned, pasting on a warm smile. “You’ll never guess who I’m sitting here talking to right now.”

“What the fu—”

“Nope. It’s Detective Gorstein. He wants to know where I was this morning when Boyden Locke’s Picasso was getting lifted.”

“And what are you telling him, Sam? I warned you about the consequences of your not cooperating with m—”

“Let’s just say I’m trying to be nice, but I’m getting a little bored. Why don’t you call me back in five?”

“Why don’t I come see you in five? If the cop’s still there, he’s dead.”

“Thanks, honey. ’Bye.” She hung up and set the phone aside, keeping her expression calm despite the hammering of her heart. She didn’t like Gorstein, but she certainly didn’t want him dead. “Anything else, Detective?”

“Not right now. If any more art or diamonds go missing, though, I’ll be back. With a warrant and cuffs. Then maybe you’ll answer some questions.”

“The next time you want my help with something, ask before you start handing out the threats. For now, get the hell out of my house.”

He pushed upright. “The rich guy’s house, you mean.”

No, she’d actually been feeling rather territorial about it since people had started breaking in. “We share. Good night.”

Gorstein chucked his toothpick into the dead fireplace. “Stay in town, Ms. J, or I’ll get suspicious again.”

As soon as the front door clicked shut, Samantha locked it and ran downstairs to the kitchen. Both the butler and the cook were watching a preseason baseball game on the television there. “Guys, I need you to stay down here for a little while,” she said, as Wilder stood up.

“Is something amiss?”

“Not yet. Just stay down here. Do you have a cell phone?”

The butler frowned. “No, Miss Sam. The—”

She tossed him hers. “If you hear anything like gunfire or screaming, lock yourselves in the pantry and call the cops. And lock this door now,” she continued, gesturing behind
her. “Don’t open it until you hear me, Addison, or somebody you
know
is a cop. Got it?”

“Yes, ma’am. But—”

Shutting the door behind her, she flew up the stairs to the main part of the house again. The housekeepers would have left hours ago, and Ben was driving Rick, so the only problem would be if Rick came home early.
Home
.

Pushing away the sudden surge of domesticity, Samantha checked the hem of her shirt to make sure the copper wire she’d fed in there remained. A paperclip and a rubber band lay in one pants pocket, while a strip of duct tape curved around the inside of one pants leg. If she got grabbed, she’d have a fair chance of escaping.

If Veittsreig came after her with a gun, though…She eyed the various items in the front sitting room. A bronze mask of Apollo, a hunk of rock with a dinosaur tooth sticking out of it, the fire poker, and sundry other knickknacks of various sizes and values. A pretty good choice of ammo, really, if an expensive one. And on top of that, if she ended up dead, at least Rick and Stoney would know who to blame.

Footsteps padded down the stairs behind her. He’d come in through the damn window again. “In here,” she called, sitting back down on the coffee table. It was pretty central, so she could move in any direction.

Veittsreig appeared in the doorway. “Since when do you talk with the police?” he asked, his German accent stronger tonight. He was irritated or edgy, then—neither of which emotion was good for her.

“Since they arrested me and still consider me a suspect,” she returned. “Did you forget how to knock?”

“You seem to have cops watching the house.” He shrugged his wide shoulders. “Besides, I go where I want.”

“And take what you want, apparently. Why the Picasso,
and why Locke? Did you know I met with him earlier this week? You knew I was at his house for a party last night.”

“Are you wearing a wire, Sam? Is that why the policeman came by?”

“Fuck you. Do you really think I wanted him in here tonight?”

Nicholas shook his head. Slowly he pulled a pistol from the small of his back, where it had been hidden beneath his light jacket. “I have to be sure, though. Stand up. Hands away from your sides.”

Great
. “This isn’t a very good way to start a partnership,” she snapped, complying. “If you get fresh, I’m gonna castrate you.”

He approached, and with his left hand felt up and down her legs, around her waist, down both arms, and then down the front of her bra. Before he moved off he squeezed her left breast.

“Satisfied, Mr. Grabby?”

“I thought you were going to castrate me.”

“After we make some big money. I can be patient.” She was also very, very grateful that her gentleman knight hadn’t been anywhere around to see that. “Why Locke?”

“Where’s my present?”

With a scowl she dug up the felt bag from the couch and tossed it at his head. He caught it with his free hand. Tugging the strings open, he looked inside, then dumped the contents on one of the cushions. “Very nice. Did you choose them last night at your party?”

“Are
you
wearing a wire? Why Locke?”

“We’ve been around, watching, for a couple of days. My buyer needed a Picasso, and you knew Locke, who has a Picasso, so I thought, hey, the more tangled you are, the more likely you are to stick with me on this.”

“Gosh, I’m flattered. Who’s the buyer?”

“Like I would give you the chance to cut me out of the deal. He’s my business. You stick with yours.”

He
. A guy, and solo. That narrowed it down—by a teeny, tiny bit. “Possessive, aren’t you?”

“You don’t carry a gun,” he said, as he put away his own weapon.

“Guns are for hacks who can’t get in and out of a place clean. And they piss people off.”

He cocked his blonde head at her. “Are you pissed off?”

With him as close as he was, if she sat again her face would be at his crotch level. Not a good idea, given the way he’d been eyeing her. She stayed on her feet. “I’m wondering if you think you’re being sexy, or if you actually have something I’m interested in—like a plan.”

For a moment he looked her up and down again, while her flesh tried not to crawl. He was good-looking, she supposed, but Rick was in a class so far beyond this guy—beyond most guys—that even if they split up she wasn’t sure she’d ever want to date again, much less sleep with anyone else.

Finally Nicholas sat on the arm of the couch. “Once I tell you, you’re in one hundred percent. You even flinch, and that’s it.”

Samantha didn’t have to fake her frown. “I thought I was in already. Hence the fucking diamond theft.”

He smiled. “Well, yes, but I want to make sure you understand. In, or dead. And if it helps, given your talents and your reputation, we agreed on an even seven-way split.”

“My dad agreed to a seven-way split, too?”

“Your dad, too.”

Her dad rarely shared credit or profit, so he
had
to be working for the white hats. “How much, then?”

“Figuring our take after redistribution, two and a half
million each. That doesn’t include the Hogarth or the Picasso or the jewelry. They’re a different deal—one that doesn’t include you.”

The diamonds would only have netted her five figures, anyway. “Euro or U.S.?”

“Good old American dollars.”

Doing some swift calculations she totaled the thieves’ take, and then the likely overall total net of the job. “A hundred and seventy-five million? What are you doing, hitting the U.S. Treasury?”

“Are you in?”

“Are you guaranteeing my cut?”

Nicholas chuckled. “There are no guarantees in life, Sam. You know that. If the job’s successful and nobody tries to pull anything, then you’ll get your cut.”

“Then I’m in.” Deep inside, she wished she’d had to argue with herself over the moral and material implications before she agreed to take part in a robbery. Mostly, though, she was dying to know what the gig was, and already anticipating going in. Last night had been too damned easy, and mostly it had served to remind her of how much she missed the rush. “What’s the job?”

“Let me remind you first that if the cops or Interpol or the FBI or anybody else hears about this, I’ll kill your father, your boyfriend, and everyone else you know.”

“Now just a damn minute,” she retorted, fighting the contrary rushes of panic and adrenaline. “You said I was in or dead. I’m in. But six other people plus whoever hired you know about this job, and probably in way more detail than I do.
I
won’t snitch. The rest are your problem.”

Slowly he nodded. “Fair enough.”

“So what’s the fucking gig?”

“A Stradivarius violin, Bellini’s
Madonna and Child
,
Titian’s
Venus and Adonis
, El Greco’s
View of Toledo
, and Leutze’s
Washington Crossing the Delaware
. How’s that for five minutes’ work?”

Samantha went ice-cold to her bones. “You’re hitting the Met.”

With another grin he stood and headed for the door. “I’ll contact you with the details in a couple of hours, once I can verify that these are the Hodges diamonds, and that you didn’t just take advantage of somebody else’s bad deed. And one correction, Sam:
We’re
hitting the Metropolitan Museum of Art. On Tuesday.”

Saturday, 11:25 p.m.

A
s the limousine stopped at the front steps of the townhouse, Richard climbed out. “I’ll need you at nine o’clock, Ben,” he said, as the driver held the door open for him.

“I’ll have the car here.” Ben hesitated. “Do you…would you like some assistance, sir?”

Richard looked back over his shoulder. “Nine o’clock.”

“Yes, sir.”

As the limo pulled away, Richard tried the front door. It was locked. Since he was not going to knock at his own bloody house, he searched his pockets for a key. Finally he found one, and shoved it at the lock. He missed, and the key fell onto the brick steps with a quiet clatter.

Bending down to pick it up, he almost fell off the steps and rolled into the street. That would have looked good on the front cover of
CEO
magazine. Belatedly he glanced
around, but other than a few cars going by, the street looked empty. Of course, if what Samantha said was true, police were watching the house, and burglars were watching the house. And maybe Godzilla and Santa Claus, too.

With a snort that didn’t feel or sound particularly amused, he retrieved the key. This time he got it into the lock and opened the door. Inside, the house was dark and quiet. It was early still for Samantha to have gone to bed, but for all he knew she was hanging out a window somewhere miles away. How would he know? Maybe Veittsreig wanted more diamonds. Or some emeralds.

He locked the door behind him and made sure to set the perimeter alarm, though neither seemed to do much good these days. People apparently came and went at will in all of his properties. Even so, he had no intention of making things easier for anybody.

Despite an irregularity of the stair spacing that he’d never noticed before, he made it to the first floor. Or second floor, rather, since he was in America. Thankfully the bedroom door was unlocked, since he didn’t have a key to that one. Or to the woman he hoped was inside.

The lights and the television were on, and Samantha sat on the bed with a spread of books and papers around her. She hadn’t gone off to rob the Fudge King tonight, anyway.

“Hi,” she said, smiling. “Did you buy any more floors of the hotel?”

“No. I’m almost there, though. I think. Unless something happens to make Hoshido want to raise the price again. Damn Matsuo.”

“Why? I liked him.”

“So do I.” At dinner, though, Matsuo had talked a little about courtship traditions in Japan, and the changes his wife had insisted on making both to their engagement and their
wedding. Miazaki Hoshido was clearly a special and unusual woman—even given the fact that she’d probably never stolen anything in her life.

He pulled off his suit jacket and tossed it over a chair. His tie followed. He’d been wearing the bloody things for sixteen hours straight, and he was ready to relax—except that Samantha was entangled with a crew of killers, and that last night they’d stolen diamonds from a couple who gave a percentage of their profits to some of the same charities he did. Frowning, he kicked off his shoes.

“Are you drunk?”

Richard looked over at the bed. “What I am, my dear, is pissed. That’s how we say it where I come from.”

She began gathering her papers and books into a pile. “At least tell me the drinking didn’t start until the negotiations were finished.”

He undid his belt and unzipped his trousers. “Excuse me, but are you telling me how to conduct business? Because I seem to recall your refusing that advice when I offered it to you.”

“I am not going to argue with you tonight,” she said coolly, climbing off the bed and setting her papers on the writing desk. “I know you’re
pissed
, and I know you probably need to vent. But I’m not having any conversation with you when you probably won’t even remember it.”

“Why not? Does my having a few drinks change the way you lied to me about knowing who stole my Hogarth? Does it change how you decided to participate in some robbery and tell me about it over lunch? Does it change that we—
we
—stole from some nice old people who bake biscuits—cookies—for a living? Does it change how whatever I try to do to help you, you actively circumvent me so you can go off with your criminal friends who shoot people?”

For a long moment she stared at him from the far side of the bed while he tried not to wobble. Then she picked up her paperwork again and walked up to him.

“You know,” she said in a low voice, “I spent the last three hours thinking how much I really wanted to talk with you tonight. I really wanted your help.” She moved past him to the door.

Richard turned around, nearly tripping over his sagging trousers. “Where the devil do you think you’re going?”

“I’m going to the guest room. I have some more work to do tonight, and it’ll take longer than I expected, because I’ll be doing it alone. Good night, Rick.”

She left him standing there in his dark blue shirt, checkered boxers, and black socks. “Fuck,” he said, and collapsed on the bed.

Four hours later he woke up cold, cranky, and his head aching. As soon as he could stand up, he staggered into the bathroom for aspirin, grabbed his toothbrush and toothpaste, and stepped into the shower.

Twenty minutes after that he could open both bloodshot eyes at the same time, and his brain began to creak into motion again. Samantha. She’d said she was going to the guest room, but she had a nasty habit of slipping away from him in the middle of the night.

Shrugging into his blue cotton robe, he left the bedroom and headed two doors down toward the back of the house. The door was closed, but not locked—a good sign, he hoped.

“Samantha?” he said quietly, pushing open the door.

The light on the nightstand was still on, but she wasn’t reading by it. The papers and books seemed to have multiplied, and they covered the bed except for where Samantha lay sprawled across the pillows. Auburn hair straggled across
her closed eyes, and she still wore her jeans and T-shirt with the open shirt over it.

If he wanted an assurance that he didn’t merely claim to love her but truly did, the tremendous relief at seeing her there and the overwhelming sense of…tenderness, of wanting to hold her and to protect her, answered the question clearly enough for him.

Moving silently, he gathered the scattered papers together. Every take-advantage-of-the-opponent instinct in his business-hardened body wanted to read through them and see what she was up to, and he just as strongly resisted. If she wanted him to know, she would tell him. He set the things on the floor, picked up the soft throw lying across the foot of the bed, and covered her gently.

She blearily opened her eyes. “I’m cold without you,” she mumbled, and closed them again.

With a faint smile he climbed crossways onto the bed along the headboard to lie down beside her. Eyes still closed, she flipped the throw so it covered him, as well.

“I love you,” he whispered, sliding an arm across her shoulders.

“I love you,” she murmured back, curling against him.

And abruptly the world was right again. What did he care about a bloody hotel when he had his own semi-retired cat burglar? And to think, two hundred and fifty years ago as a member of the peerage he would have been obligated to have her hanged. Thank God and the devil that this wasn’t a romance of a historical bent. Because come hell or high water, if she was going to commit even grander larceny than last night, he meant to help her do it.

Richard groaned and opened his eyes as somebody nudged him hard in the shoulder. Samantha. “What?”

“It’s eight o’clock,” she said, shimmying off the guest room bed. “You said before that you were holding a strategy thingy at nine thirty.”

She’d changed clothes, he noticed, into jeans shorts and a red tank top—her staying-around-the-house clothes. Abruptly he wanted to cancel his meeting thingy and have a naked thingy with Samantha.

“Thanks. Could I get some cof—”

“Coffee?” she broke in, handing him a steaming cup as he sat up. “And Vilseau’s making some toast.”

“After last night I thought you might be throwing this in my face,” he said, inhaling the vanilla-nut aroma. Tea was definitely more civilized, but thank God for coffee.

“It was weird,” she said, hauling up her papers and dumping them on the bed again. “It occurred to me that I’m usually the one who gets all crazy, and you logic me out of it, or you stand back so I can vent.” She shrugged. “So I was the responsible one last night, and I figured you needed to vent.”

“I suppose I did.”

“Could I ask why?” Samantha plunked herself back, catlike, on the bed.

“No,” he returned, sipping the blissfully hot coffee.

“No?”

“Because last night it made sense, and this morning you’ll laugh. And I’m far too important to be laughed at.”

She gave her quicksilver grin. “Then you should tell me, because
my
story’s not as funny.”

He drew a breath. After last night, he supposed he owed her some sort of explanation. “Fine. I own a lot of things. I employ a great many people. They do as I ask, and everything runs smoothly. One of the reasons I’m successful is
because I usually know what’s coming next, what the next move is going to be, so I can take the appropriate counterstep. And day before yesterday when we sat in the cafeteria and you told me that you were going to participate in some big robbery and needed to commit a smaller one just for some cove’s amusement, I realized I was absolutely clueless about what to do next. And at Locke’s party, I knew you were looking for marks.”

“Rick, you—”

“And then I toddled off to dinner while you had to wait for a phone call and a visit from someone whom I presume to be a very dangerous man.”

“Negotiating an eighty-seven-million-dollar deal is not toddling, and I didn’t know what I was supposed to do with Veittsreig, either. I’m not going back to being Ma Barker full-time. I was doing the least bad thing I could think of until we—
we
—could figure something out.”

“Yes, but then during dinner I started trying to imagine Miazaki Hoshido breaking into someone’s house and using peanut butter to subdue their dog. And I tried to imagine Patricia doing that. They would have made a complete muck of it. Out of everyone I know in the world, you are the only one I could picture doing what you do. And I got angry at myself, because I was proud of you.”

“Did you start drinking before or after you realized you were proud of me?”

“After. That’s why I started drinking.”

She leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. “So you do have a weakness. If it makes you feel any better, I’m not always as together as I let on, either.”

Richard nearly choked on his coffee as he laughed. “On that note, what’s your news? Did Veittsreig call?”

“Yes, but that’s only part of my story.”

He took another, more careful swallow of coffee, reminding himself that she wasn’t being deliberately difficult. She was being Samantha, looking for angles and opportunities, for the best way to approach…anything. Everything. “And?” he finally prompted.

“Okay.” She bent down to sniff his coffee. “If that tasted as good as it smelled, I wouldn’t badmouth it so much. But me, I like Diet Coke. I guess that’s why Detective Gorstein brought me one when he came by last night.”

“He what?” The cup in his hand jumped, and he set it on the nightstand.

“Apparently they’ve pretty much cleared me, and somebody called him and suggested that if he would be a little more civil, I might lend him some of my tremendous insight.”

“Hm.” Gorstein’s tunnel vision hadn’t been as unalterable as he’d feared. “You talked with him, then?”

“After I hid the diamonds under a pillow. I think he’d already come to pretty much the same conclusions, but at least I could point out that I had an alibi for yesterday morning. And he asked about the hotel, so they were definitely paying attention to where I was on Friday night.”

Richard stopped halfway to the edge of the bed. “Yesterday morning?”

“Boyden Locke lost a Picasso. Luckily we were checking out of the Manhattan and heading back here with cops tailing us, but we both know I could have slipped out and pulled another robbery without them knowing a thing.”

Obviously her story was going to get worse. She hadn’t even mentioned Veittsreig yet. Holding up a hand to stop her, he picked up the guest room phone and dialed downstairs.
“Wilder, please tell Ben I’m pushing back my schedule. I’ll need him at half nine.”

“Very good, sir.”

“No, make that ten.”

“I’ll inform him.”

Richard took Samantha’s hand, twining his fingers with hers. “What else?”

With a sigh she leaned her head against his shoulder. “While Gorstein was here, Veittsreig called. He wanted to know why the cops were at the house. I pretended he was you and told him to call me back. Instead he told me he’d be here in five minutes, and to get rid of Gorstein or else.”

“Or else.” His muscles tensed, even though he’d obviously arrived far too late to be of any use. If he had arrived in time, drunk, he might have gotten one or both of them killed.
Way to save the day, Rick
.

“I got Gorstein out the door in time. But guess what the gig is?”

“Sam.”

“Okay, okay. We’re hitting the Met. On Tuesday. You might want to clear your schedule.”

She told him what she knew, up through the second call she’d gotten two hours later detailing where they were meeting and what her role would be. By the time she finished, they were both on their stomachs lying across the bed and looking at the floor plans of the museum she’d dug up in one of his art books. She hoped Nicholas or Martin had the wiring plans, or they weren’t going to get very far.

“One thing that doesn’t make sense to me,” Rick said, pulling over a photo of
Venus and Adonis
, “is that if this gang knows—”

“Crew,” she corrected.

“If this crew knows your reputation, they also know that you don’t hit museums.”

“I don’t think they much care about my personal preferences.”