Hard Target (10 page)

“Sleep well?” she asked, voice husky with sleep.

His cock hardened immediately and he rattled his paper as he turned the page more forcefully than necessary.

“Fine thanks.” He let the full-color spread of an auction house ad absorb his interest. “You?”

“Pretty good.” She stretched and yawned, then he heard her lift the coffeepot. “Wow. You made coffee?”

“Cream’s in the fridge,” he answered. “Hope you don’t mind full fat. It was all they had at the place around the corner.”

A spoon clattered against the counter. “You got cream for me?”

Despite his best intentions he looked up.

At her doe-eyed expression—all schoolgirl romance—he couldn’t help biting out, “Seemed the least I could do after you put out the sugar.”

Red painted her skin from the roots of her hair to the expanse of skin visible above the neck of her tee. Braless, she presented a picture of rosy temptation just begging to be plucked.

“I-I’m sorry.”

“It was habit,” he bit out. “For both of us.”

She flinched, her hands spasming around the mug. He shoved down a wave of remorse. Since when had she ever been vulnerable? Alexandra Valentine always played with the big boys and she’d never before failed to realize that meant she might get bruised—physically and emotionally. Last night had been a mistake. Simon knew it and he was fairly certain Alex did too. Quickly burying the romance they’d resurrected seemed the kindest thing. No way he’d allow it to animate into a shuffling zombie he’d only have to napalm later.

Folding his paper in thirds and creasing it thoroughly, he gave himself time to regain his composure. “Alex. What we had…”

“Stop. I get it.” She held up a hand. “It’s all good. We’re good.”

A sheen of tears made her smile appear even more forced than he already knew it to be. She didn’t deserve his pity, yet he found himself desperate to offer her comfort in whatever way his patched-together sense of self might allow.

“I’m sorry.” He pushed away from the table and leaned over the breakfast bar to place his dishes in the sink. “I broke my word last night. It won’t happen again.”

The woman he’d once loved chewed on her lower lip. Sitting again, he took a sip of his tea and awaited her response. When it came, it was nothing he’d expected.

“What if I want it to happen again?”

Simon’s cock jerked hard and he grabbed for his paper. Yanking the folded pages in front of his face, he pretended not to have heard her.

With a heaving sigh, Alex began to do his dishes. Simon peered around the paper to study the grace and precision of her motions—the way her fingers flitted over the porcelain. How she delicately yet self-assuredly grasped the sponge. Shoulders set, arms relaxed but strong, she moved like a dancer while accomplishing the most mundane of tasks. She went about the chore, cheeks flushed, lips parted.

Her innocently sexy expression took him to a place in memory he’d long since forgotten. A time when she’d knelt in the middle of his kitchen floor as he’d undone his trousers. Moist tongue darting, she’d tasted the tip of his cock as it sprang forth. He’d smiled down at her.

Relax your jaw
, he’d said.

She’d nodded and done just as he’d asked, parting her glossy lips for his entry.

Beautiful
, he’d whispered when she’d given him the gift of her mouth.

“What?” Alex blinked at him from her stance at the sink.

“I didn’t say anything.” He stood and stretched with a nonchalance he didn’t remotely feel. Water ran unheeded and began to overflow the dishpan. He reached past the counter to turn it off.

“You said
beautiful
,” she asserted, apparently unwilling to let the matter go.

Frowning, he turned away to scoop up his paper. She might be sexy as hell, but she was still a pain in his ass.

“Get dressed.” Simon shot the directive over his shoulder as he exited the kitchen. “We’re going to case the museum. Take a look at that painting.”

Alex followed on his heels to the bathroom, two paces behind.

Agitated beyond civility, he whirled on her. “You want to try to corner me in the shower now?”

She gaped at him for all of a second before she lit into him.

“Of all the arrogant, self-centered… I am
not
coming on to you, Simon.” She pushed past him to enter the bathroom before him. “Contrary to what you might believe, I didn’t spend the last several years trying to come up with ways to seduce you. Mostly, I tried to forget you ever existed. That
we
ever existed.”

Her admission hung between them, visible as frosty breath on a winter morning. In a seemingly suspended moment, she glared at him as he processed the sting.

“Finished?” he asked, jaw set.

“With you,” she answered.

“Well, whad’ya know? We agree on something.” He raked a hand through his hair. “Next thing we’ll be picking out china patterns.”

She slammed the door in his face and he cursed.

How he’d work with her for two more minutes much less for the duration of this job he didn’t know. When she took too long in the bath, he picked the lock, stalked in and grabbed his toothbrush before stalking out again. She blessed him out for the intrusion, but he didn’t care—couldn’t bring himself to let her win this battle. His nerves were too raw—from both her words and last night’s kisses.

How could she feel so right with her arms wrapped around him and so wrong in every other way? Her body seemed tailor-made for his touch, yet everything about her grated. Crazy didn’t begin to describe what she made him. Furious and horny shouldn’t mix, yet with her he could be arguing one second and contemplating fucking her in the next.

Well, she’d better be careful what she wished for because he was finished playing the gentleman. Next time she asked him ever so prettily to fuck her he’d do it. No matter the place or the time. Consequences be damned. He’d get her out of his system and move on like he should’ve years ago.

An hour later they stood silently side-by-side in the MoMA ticket line and his cock still hadn’t flagged. The Sunday crowd was mostly composed of parents with kids and art students with pads of drawing paper tucked under their arms. Hands stuck in his pockets to hide the bulge in his pants, Simon rocked on his heels and peered skyward.

With no visible ductwork, the ceiling in this part of the building presented no clues as to how they’d get in—and Gun’s idea of simply walking in the front door seemed the best option. It had been years since Simon visited the museum, but if memory served there were terrace doors on the second floor that might get Alex and the frame inside unnoticed.

Alex twined her arm with his and he frowned down at her. She smiled and batted her lashes. “What’s the matter? Too hot to touch, darling?”

Oh. That’s right. They were supposed to be a couple. For good measure and just because he knew it’d annoy her, he put his arm around her waist and his hand in her right front jeans pocket. The curve of her hip settled into his palm as if it’d been made with no other purpose in mind. He caressed her hipbone with his thumb and she attempted to shimmy away from him. Tightening his arm, he renewed the caress.

“Two tickets,” Alex said to the museum worker when they approached the counter.

“Fifty dollars,” the man answered, monotone.

Simon waited for Alex to fork over the exorbitant sum. When she didn’t, he glanced from the lighted display behind the counter to her. She raised her brows.

“I forgot my wallet,” he lied.

Alex rolled her eyes at the ticket guy. “Just like a man. Would you do this to your girlfriend?”

A few people behind them began to mutter about the line, but one woman said, “Dump him. I’m sure you can do better.”

He was going to kill Alex. Right here in front of seventy-five witnesses. Simon yanked out his wallet and slapped down his business credit card. When he and Alex walked away, tickets in hand, he leaned close to her ear, pretending to kiss it.

“You’re running an expense account for me,” he said. “Starting now.”

They handed their tickets to the college student manning the ropes before Alex pulled him down a short hallway to an empty alcove near the restrooms.

“Are you trying to blow our cover?” She sounded so much like a spitting cat Simon wondered whether the fingernails she dug into his forearm had turned into claws.

“I never paid for everything before…” He carefully extricated his arm before she drew blood.

And he hadn’t. She’d almost always insisted on going Dutch. On not losing her independence. At first it made him uncomfortable, but now that he expected it she turned the tables on him? Wasn’t that just like a woman? He shook his head. No. Not like a woman. Like
this
woman.

“We were never trying to establish a cover before. This isn’t real, Simon. It’s business.” The bite to her tone matched the spark in her eyes.

He found himself stepping into her, pushing her into the shadows. Closing in until her ass hit the wall and his palms bracketed her head.

“You want some cover, sweetheart?” He kept the question low and suggestive, just because he knew it would rattle her. “Is that what this mission is really about?”

Palms flat against the wall behind her, she stared up at him. The scent of spiced apricots surrounded him, issuing from her on each exhale. He remembered the taste of her in his mouth last night, tingling his lips in fiery little shocks. The point of her tongue delving in and out, toying with him. Tempting him.

“Don’t play with me, Simon.” She jerked her chin toward the stairway. “Save it for upstairs, if we need to create a diversion.”

He dipped his attention to her cleavage. Since last night—since she’d all but begged him to fuck her in his own bed—he’d been unable to think of anything but her. Taste and smell and feel anything but her. As if everything about her coalesced to concoct an aphrodisiac designed to bring him to his knees. When her alabaster skin flushed red then went pale in rapid succession, he willed himself to shove away from the wall, but barely.

Alex trailed behind him, following him to the outdoor sculpture garden. He felt her presence tugging at his awareness until the spark between them became a conflagration that defied all his efforts at containment. He stood by a pond in the sculpture garden and stared at the copper and silver coins glittering against black tiles at the bottom. Alex stepped close. Though she didn’t touch him he felt the skin of her arm, its electricity and warmth, reaching across the infinitesimal divide she maintained between them.

“There’s a terrace on the second level. A café with doors to the exterior,” he said. “I could get you in that way.”

As if their argument never happened, she clasped his hand in hers, threading their fingers together with a squeeze. “Where are the Picassos?”

To the man who’d just walked behind them with his gangly teenage son, the question would sound innocent enough. Just a visitor asking her boyfriend where her favorite artist’s work hung. Simon, of course, knew better. “The fifth floor.”

Alex withdrew her hand from his. Simon flexed his fingers and turned away from the pool as she took a coin from her pocket. Her action bought him time to consider the Rockefeller Apartments towering above the museum, adjacent to the main entrance façade. A window cleaner’s rig hung from high above, dangling almost to the museum roof.

“How are you at climbing?” Simon asked, judging the coast clear.

Tossing the coin carelessly into the water where it made a little splash, Alex spoke over her shoulder. “Wouldn’t that be rappelling?”

He snorted. “We know you’re good at that.”

“Ha ha. Different spelling.” She grabbed his hand. “Come on. Let’s go see the Picassos.”

They took the rear stairway to the second floor. Its curving, open metal railings posed fewer obstacles to his view than the escalators on the other side of the building and allowed them to dodge most of the visitor traffic. He stopped to watch a giant metal mobile twist this way and that.

Alex tugged his hand and Simon blinked. “What?”

She slid her gaze toward a door marked
Electrical Closet
. Another unmarked door, the hum of cooling fans emanating from behind, likely housed a wiring and communication closet. Simon nodded and began to pay more attention to his surroundings.

Every corner of the halls and galleries contained a security camera. Black domes covered each camera. They walked to the second floor café and gift shop first. Pretending to take in the view, Simon noted the doors and windows along the terrace sported obvious alarms attached to the glass. Opening the doors without disarming the alarms first was out of the question, and cutting through the glass would leave evidence they couldn’t afford. This needed to be a seamless job. Undetectable and quick.

Unsmiling guards stationed in the galleries made Simon’s skin twitch. He felt watched, paranoid, as he and Alex wandered the fifth floor. They wound in and out of the rooms, getting to know the somewhat maze-like floor plan and pausing to take pictures of one another in front of some of the paintings for later reference. On the fifth floor they admired several of Picasso’s works, pretending every so often to take in a Mondrian or a Matisse.