Billionaires Prefer Blondes (17 page)

He scowled, sexy as hell in his morning beard stubble, crazy black bed hair, and the blue bathrobe he’d worn all night. “What does Walter think of all this?”

“I haven’t told him yet. This affects you—us—more than it does me and Stoney. I thought you should know first.”

Dark blue eyes met hers. “I apologize again for being such a bastard last night. You know I don’t normally do that.”

“I know.” What he’d said had hurt, mostly because it had been true. “And I’m trying,” she said quietly, looking down at her hands. Long-fingered thief’s hands, Martin had always said, as if her fingers somehow proved that she was meant to be what she’d become. “Being good is hard.”

“It’s only hard if you mean it,” he whispered, brushing her hair back from her face. “It would be easy if you were pretending.”

She looked up, smiling at him, wondering if her expression looked as sappy as it felt. “You are a very nice man.”

“No, I’m not.” He pulled her arm, flipping her onto her back.

Before she could roll out he kissed her, his mouth tasting of coffee and the remnants of toothpaste. Slow and soft, his lips teased at hers, his tongue joining and then retreating from the pursuit. She moaned, slipping her arms around his shoulders as he sank down over her. His beard stubble scratched her cheeks a little, but she liked the sensation.

This was what nobody in her old circle understood. That she wasn’t hanging around Rick to look for any and every opportunity to rob him when he turned his back. She liked
being in his presence, sharing conversations with him, knowing that she aroused him as much as he excited her. Still kissing her softly, he slowly pushed her tank top up around her shoulders. Slipping agile fingers under her bra, he pushed it up, as well, and then slid down to brush his lips over one breast and then the other.

Samantha moaned, pulling her body up against his. His robe was easy to tug off, but he covered her hands when she started to unzip her shorts. “It’s Sunday,” he murmured, kissing her mouth again. “Our day of rest.” Rick ran his free hand down her spine, firming his grip as he rolled, pulling her over him.

“This doesn’t feel like resting,” she breathed, chuckling. “And you still have a meeting.” Beneath the arousal of her body, she felt relief. After his deep anger at her for deciding to break into the Hodgeses’, and then what she’d read as disappointment in him last night, it felt good—and safe—to be in his arms again, to feel his desire for her.

“I imagine they’ll wait for me.”

She slid down, kissing his chest and nipples, feeling his hard muscles quiver beneath his skin. So he’d said he was proud of her—for being good at her chosen profession, she assumed—but she wasn’t convinced. People didn’t come home drunk and yelling when they were happy.

“What if it happens again?” she whispered, lifting to run her lips along his jawline.

“What if what happens again?”

“What if circumstances cause me to choose a break-in over death and dismemberment?”

“We’ll make certain it doesn’t happen,” he rumbled, his hands grasping her bottom and sliding down her thighs.

“We can’t do that.”

“Not now, Sam.” Before she could protest that, he pulled
her down over him and kissed her until she couldn’t breathe. “You are the smartest person I know,” he said finally, shifting his attention to unfastening her shorts. “You are honorable, and kind, and devastatingly beautiful, and I love you. Anything else is secondary.”

She smiled as he rolled them again. “I’m kind?”

Rick sat up to scoot her shorts and her blue thongs off. He did seem to like the thongs even over the frilly panties—if she could get over the feeling of having a permanent wedgie, she’d make the switch.

“You fed Puffy peanut butter. Somehow I can’t imagine some of your former confederates taking the trouble to make friends with the mark’s dog.”

That was true; but jeez, she didn’t even like killing spiders. “He was cute,” she returned, then gasped as he trailed a hand between her thighs.

He lifted his azure blue eyes to hers. “You’re wet.”

She jumped at the motion of his fingers. “I want you, Brit.”

“I love you, Yank.” Rick settled over her again, brushing her hair back to expose her throat, and licking and nipping at her sensitive skin. With his hand he caressed her again, and she groaned.

When she couldn’t stand the buildup any longer, Samantha arched her hips, pulling him to her. “Please,” she murmured.

“As you wish,” he breathed, and slowly, deeply sank into her.

She came immediately, hard, clinging to him as he began pumping his hips. Digging the pads of her fingers into his back, Samantha threw her head back, gasping. She loved having him inside her; whatever mess they were making of their relationship, this spoke more loudly. They fit together. Their hearts fit together.

Rick looked down at her. “You amaze me, you know,” he panted, kissing her again.

“I know.”

With a chuckle he pushed forward, grunting, then slowly sank down on top of her. “I wish I didn’t have that bloody meeting,” he said when he had some breath back, “because I think I could kill the both of us with the sex today.”

Laughing, still feeling him inside her, she patted him on the head. “Next time, dear.”

“Come with me,” he said abruptly, lifting his face to look down at her.

“I just did.”

“Smart ass. I meant to my meeting.” He kissed her again, even more gently this time. “I’m a bit worried about you right now.”

“I can’t go. I need to find a way to lose the cops and the crooks, meet up with Stoney, and go shopping. Since I didn’t bring my B and E gear with me to New York, I’m going to need some things. More than Delroy has lying around.”

That wasn’t entirely true; she did have her lock picks and a couple of the more innocent-looking tools of the trade, but nothing that was up to the standards required by the Metropolitan Museum of Art. And she wanted to try to track down Veittsreig and his crew. Knowing where they were working from could make things easier, especially if she could use them to find out who had wanted the Hogarth and the Picasso—and probably all or most of the items currently located at the museum. And finding the two missing paintings—as well as recovering the Hodges diamonds—was of paramount importance.

“May I say that it bothers me that your father seems to want you involved in this when he’s made a deal to hand Veittsreig and his crew over to Interpol? How do you fit in with that?”

“I have a hunch, but whatever happens, I still have to be able to play my part up to that point.” She gave him a fast, tight hug, breathing in the familiar and still-intoxicating scent of his skin. “Get off me and go to your meeting.”

Clear reluctance on his face, he moved out and off of her. “Sometimes I wish I could just keep you here with me forever, Samantha Elizabeth.”

Forever was a frighteningly long time, though the idea didn’t scare her quite as much as it used to, these days. “We’d get hungry,” she said with a quick grin, and went to find her thongs.

Wearing them and her tank top, her bra readjusted to the proper position, she headed back to the master bedroom to find a pair of jeans. As she crossed the next door, the opening to Rick’s office, a shadow moved toward her.

Shrieking, she grabbed the half-open door and yanked it closed. That was
enough
. Too many damn people were breaking into this house. “Rick!”

Whoever was on the other side had a strong grip. The knob turned in her hands, and she hauled backward with all of her weight as the door inched open. As Rick charged into the hallway behind her, she shifted her weight and shoved. Hard.

The door flew open, whoever’d been pulling on it falling backward over one of the conference table chairs. Rick on her heels, she flew after him, yanking him by one ankle down to the floor. The man squealed as she knelt across his throat.

“Who the fuck do
you
work for?” she snarled, grabbing his tie off and slipping it around his flailing hands.

“He works for me, actually,” Rick said in an even tone, humor dripping from his voice. “Samantha, please get off my new assistant.”

Sunday, 10:18 a.m.

“T
his is nice work,” Richard said, flipping through the three reports as the limousine rumbled toward his downtown office.

John Stillwell was still fiddling with the tie Samantha had returned to him. “Thank you, sir.” He cleared his throat. “I do apologize for my actions earlier. I didn’t—”

“Wilder told you to wait in the office. And you didn’t take any inappropriate action.” He hadn’t taken
any
action, actually, but Samantha could be hard to handle under the best of circumstances. At least Stillwell hadn’t wet himself, being jumped by a woman in a tank top and thong underwear.

“It wasn’t the first impression I wanted to make.”

Rick rattled the papers. “I’ll consider these as your first impression.” He glanced at the younger man seated across from him. They’d actually met on several occasions, and while they’d dealt in different areas of Addisco, he’d seen the
fellow’s work, and he’d never heard anything but praise from Stillwell’s superiors. “When did you get in to New York, anyway?”

“The flight landed at seven this morning, sir.”

“Rick, please. Did Sarah arrange a place for you to stay?”

“She wasn’t certain how long you would be in town. I left my luggage with your butler until I could—”

“We’ll put you in the guest room,” Richard decided. “We should only be in New York for another week or so.” Barring disaster, that was. “You’ll have considerably more space in Palm Beach.”

“If I might ask, the lady, Miss Jellicoe, is she…I mean to say, is there anything I need to know in order to perform my duties?”

“It is very unlikely that Samantha will tackle you again.” Rick stifled a grin. “We had a break-in a few days ago, as you may have heard. We’ve been a bit jumpy.” Technically, they’d had three break-ins, all apparently perpetrated by the same man, but that wasn’t for public dissemination.

“I see, sir—Rick. Of course. I should have announced my presence, but I…presumed you were occupied.”

Yes, in the room right next door
. Rick returned to the paperwork. If Stillwell had overheard part of his conversation with Samantha, that could explain the fellow’s haste in trying to exit the office, and his visible nervousness now. On the other hand, John might have heard the sex, or he could be suffering from first-day job jitters. While Richard had never been excessively paranoid, with Sam in his life it would be crazier not to be a little cautious and careful.

“I should bring you up to speed for today,” he continued. He sized up opponents for a living; he would assess Stillwell in the same way. “I have a price—eighty-seven million. What I don’t have is a timeline for me to take over operations, or a
final agreement from the city on property tax reassessment and tax incentives.”

“I read up on New York commercial property ownership on the flight over,” Stillwell said.

“That’s excellent,” Rick returned, “because you’re going to be chairing the meeting. I have another matter to see to this morning.”

His new assistant blinked. “I beg your pardon, Rick, but I read
a
book. I’m more than willing to assist, but frankly I’m concerned that I may make more of a muck of it than anything else.”

“American laws and British laws are for our attorneys, who will be there to advise you. Use them. Right now I want to see what you can negotiate for me. I’ve seen you work, and I need to know whether or not I can rely on you, John. Better to find out now than later.”

“I…very well. I won’t disappoint you, Rick.”

Rick looked him in the eye. “I hope not,” he said quietly.

He handed over the packet to Stillwell and gave him a few suggestions, then had Ben stop the limousine at the front entrance to the building.

“You have my mobile number if you need to contact me,” he said, as John climbed out of the car. “I’ll be back in an hour or two.”

“Thank you for the opportunity, Rick.”

As soon as Stillwell disappeared through the rotating glass doors, Richard sat back again. “Ben, what’s the best place to be seen in Manhattan?”

“To be seen by whom, sir?”

“Everyone.”

“Times Square.”

“Good. Take me there.”

It wasn’t much of a plan, but he’d only had the morning to
come up with it. And it had worked once before, the first time he’d tried to track down Samantha. He hoped her father was half as smart as she was.

Ben double-parked the limousine just short of Planet Hollywood. “Sir, are you sure you want to get out here? It’s pretty crowded.”

“That’s what I want.”

“But you’ll be mobbed. Do you want me to go with you?”

“No. Go back to the office.” He grimaced. “But be available for a rescue mission, just in case.”

“Yes, sir. Good luck.”

With a deep breath, Richard climbed out of the limousine. He liked privacy. Considering how many people knew of him, he was exceedingly thankful for his high walls and topline security. In Manhattan privacy wasn’t as much of an issue—unless a celebrity appeared somewhere frequented by tourists.

In his blue Armani suit, dark burgundy shirt, and black tie, he was probably at his most recognizable. And that was what he was counting on.

It took a minute and a half. Threading his way through the streams of honking taxis, street vendors, and what felt like half a million pedestrians, he strolled in front of the ABC Television Center, figuring that would be a good place to be seen. A group of young ladies two or three years younger than Samantha, all of them dressed as cheerleaders with “Texas Tech” emblazoned across their chests, bounded up around him.

“You’re Rick Addison, aren’t you?” one of them chirped.

He gave his photo-op smile. “I am.”

“I told you!”

“Oh, can we have our picture taken with you?”

“Certainly,” he said.

“What are you doing in New York?”

“I’m looking into some real estate prop—”

“Do you know Donald Trump?”

His smile twitched, and he fixed it again as more tourists crowded to join the cheerleaders. “Yes, I do.”

“Do you call him ‘The Donald’?”

“N—”

“Who cares about Trump?” somebody else said. “Addison’s got more money.”

“He’s cuter; I know that.”

For ten minutes he did his least favorite things in the world—he posed for pictures and he signed autographs. The crowd continued to get larger and louder, but at least no one had picked his pocket or trampled him yet.

A police officer elbowed through the crowd. Now he was getting somewhere. “Everything okay, Mr. Addison?”

He deepened his smile, and more cameras flashed. “Yes, I’m quite well. It just occurred to me that with all the time I’ve spent in New York, I’ve never walked through Times Square.”

“Right.” The officer said something into the radio on his shoulder. Across Broadway two mounted police began to clop in their direction. About bloody time. And finally one of the police radio-monitoring news teams scrambled out of the studio behind him.

“Rick Addison,” the reporter said, pushing her way through the crowd, “what brings you to Times Square?”

For the camera he repeated what he’d told the police.

“You had a valuable painting stolen last week. Have the police uncovered any new leads?”

“No. I have a meeting with Martin, my lawyer, at noon. I imagine he’ll come to my office.”

The newswoman whose name he couldn’t recall eyed him for a moment, then gave her professional smile again. “What about your girlfriend, Samantha Jellicoe? Is she still considered a person of interest?”

His task accomplished, Richard let his smile cool. “To me, definitely. As for the police, you’d have to ask them.”

“Will we be hearing any wedding news from you this year, then?”

Rick gazed at her. “No comment.”

There. The piece should run on the eleven o’clock morning news. All he could do now was get back to the office and hope that Martin Jellicoe watched the news as diligently as Samantha did, and that Veittsreig didn’t, or that he wouldn’t make the connection. As for how odd he might look on the broadcast, he was British. That excused quite a bit.

“Carabiners and climbing rope, check,” Stoney said, jumping back into the passenger seat of the black Jeep Cherokee he’d rented.

Samantha pulled back into traffic. “This is such a pain,” she grumbled. “If I’d known I would be doing a B and E in New York, I would have brought my own gear.”

“Am I mistaken, or are you revved about this?”

“Come on, the other night’s big trick was peanut butter. This is my first real fix in five months. I didn’t give the business up because I didn’t like doing it.”

Stoney folded his arms across his chest. “Why did you give it up, then? Because if I’m working in a damn office and setting up damn security appointments for no good reason, I’m going to be kind of mad.”

“I gave it up because I had a really long streak of really good luck, and sooner or later it was going to run out. And because three people got killed during the course of my last
job.” And because on that last job she’d met someone who for the first time tempted her more than the adrenaline-laced danger of her old life.

Obviously Stoney knew that last part, too, whether she wanted to talk about it or not, because he snorted as he tossed the equipment onto the back seat. “Head over to Sixty-third. I know a guy who knows a guy, and he should be able to fix you up with an electronic splitter.”

Her phone rang. Frowning, she checked the number, but all she could tell was that whoever was calling her was doing so from Manhattan. “
Hola
,” she said, answering.

“Is that why you encouraged me to date Boyden Locke?” Patricia’s voice came, her fury obvious in the clipped British precision of her speech. “Because you knew you were going to steal from him the next day?”

“Oh, good gravy. I had nothing to do with it, Patricia. Not everything’s about you.”

“Why, because it has to be about you?”

“Hey, you called
me
.”

“Because I won’t be pushed around again. I helped you, and this is how you repay my charity. That’s even nastier of you than I’ve come to expect.”

“The Ex?” Stoney muttered.

She nodded. One of these days she was going to have a serious discussion with Rick about what had been wrong with him to marry this woman. After all, he was the one who’d brought the Ex into their lives. She certainly wouldn’t have married Patty—but then she had a lower tolerance for bullshit than Rick did. “Setting you up with Boyden was how I repaid your charity. The rest of it is probably just your usual bad luck following you around. Maybe you need an exorcism.”

“Only to free me from your clutches.”

Samantha snorted. “I don’t want you anywhere close to my clutches. And I’m kind of busy right n—”

“Destroying my chances with two men wasn’t enough, was it? You have to set me up so you can knock me down yet again!”

“You slept around on the one good guy in your life, then married a murderer, and you dated another one. Blame them for crossing me, and blame yourself for being a nutball. I didn’t take anything from Boyden Locke. Goodbye.” She flipped the phone closed. “Now my day is complete.”

“What’s she blaming you for now?” Stoney asked.

“I suggested she might like Boyden Locke, so now she thinks that because he got robbed, I’m sabotaging her again.”

“That is why I never try to fix people up.”

“Thanks for the support.”

“Uh-huh. Make a right, if you want to miss the construction up there.”

Nodding, Samantha signaled and turned right. A blue Lincoln made the same turn two cars behind her. So had a half dozen taxis, though, and when she edged into the next lane over, he didn’t follow.

“You need to make a right at the next corner,” Stoney pointed out.

“I will. I’m just playing tourist.” She waited until they were a dozen yards from the light, then cut back into the right lane and made the turn. With a more proper signal and speed, the Lincoln turned, as well.

“What is it?” her copilot asked, his gaze on the sideview mirror.

“Me being paranoid, probably. But if it’s one of Gorstein’s guys, I really don’t want to be seen picking up a splitter. And if it’s one of Nicholas’s, I don’t want them to know that you’re involved.”

“Were they behind us at the last stop?”

“Not that I noticed.”

“Then they weren’t. Make another turn and see what happens.”

Doing the signal and lane change in the right order this time, she made another left. So did the Lincoln, moving in directly behind her this time. Evidently this guy had been paying attention during her previous taxi dodges, and he wasn’t going to let her squeak out a last-second turn. “Dammit,” she muttered.

“So lose ’em.”

“You rented the car. If we get into a pursuit, you’ll be the one they trace to it.”

“They’ve already run the plates by now, honey.” He cracked a grin. “And do you actually think I would use my real ID?”

Samantha blew out her breath, relieved. “At least one of us hasn’t lost his edge. Who has this car?”

“Antoine Washington. From Brooklyn.”

“Ah, one of the old standards. Get the gear out of the back seat, will you?”

Reaching around, he retrieved the climbing equipment, black spray paint, and industrial-strength glass cutters, shoving them into the backpack she’d brought along for the occasion. Then he pulled on his seatbelt.

“Ready?” Samantha asked, pulling a cloth from her purse and wiping down the steering wheel, gearshift, and door handle before she gave it to Stoney to do the same thing on his side. She slipped on her leather gloves and gripped the wheel again.

“Ready.”

“Hang on.” She tapped the accelerator, putting a little distance between the Jeep and the Lincoln. Then she threw it in reverse and floored it.

The rear of the Jeep slammed into the Lincoln. With a whoosh she could hear even with the windows up, the Lincoln’s air bags deployed. Jamming the Jeep into drive again, she whipped a right and then a left, nearly taking out a taxi and a hot dog stand. At the next left she slowed, cruising back into legal driving speed.