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Authors: Toni Blake

BOOK: Hotbed Honey
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She turned to give him her full attention. "What's what like?"
"Your swimsuit."
Despite the suggestion in the question, Kimberly knew it had nothing to do with
him
. It had to do with their job. "Yes, it's a two-piece. Our guest should love it."
He nodded at her, then quickly shifted his focus to getting her stuff from the car, but not before she thought she detected an unexpected glimmer of personal interest twinkling in his eyes. So maybe it
wasn't
just a business question. Her stomach raced with the idea that he might still be attracted to her…
But damn it!
She stomped her foot on the ground to punctuate her annoyance with herself.
Why did she even care? She was here to arouse the bad guy, not Max.
Still, she couldn't help it if Max was aroused, too, could she? After all, she was only doing her job. Arousal didn't necessarily mean romance—often the two weren't even connected—but how could she help letting her mind wander in that direction? Her heart resumed its racing, but she tried to keep it under control as much as possible.
"Something wrong?"
She looked up with innocent eyes as Max rounded the car with her bags. "No. Why?"
"I thought you were stepping on a bug or something." He looked toward the foot she'd just stomped.
But Max wasn't the only one who could avoid unwanted conversations, she decided. "Let's go inside. I want to look around." And she rushed ahead toward the door.
* * *
Beyond the foyer, which was lined with Mexican tile, the immense house stretched in all directions. A bright, spacious family room with a vaulted ceiling and huge picture windows that looked out on the pool area caught Kimberly's eye. To the right was a crisp white kitchen with a cooking island and a breakfast nook with another picture window.
In complete awe, Kimberly wandered the length of the nearest hallway, finding an elegant dining room filled with massive oak furniture. Renaissance art graced the walls. She next discovered an office and a library, a billiards room and a plush bathroom big enough to house a small family. She stumbled through a door into the three-car garage to find one spot empty; however, a gray Mercedes and a jade-green Jaguar convertible sat neatly where they belonged.
Returning to the foyer on the route she'd traveled, she found Max wearing an annoyed look as he waited for her at the bottom of the curving staircase she'd glimpsed when she'd come inside. "Do you mind?" he muttered. "This thing weighs a ton." He motioned to the suitcase clutched in his right fist.
Kimberly merrily took the garment bag from his other hand. "Shoes," she explained of the suitcase. "Lots of them." Then she went past him on the stairs, still in wonder over the spectacular home she would call her own for the next few days. She didn't normally go for the contemporary look, but this house combined modern things with touches of old elegance in a way that filled her senses.
Once upstairs, she dragged her garment bag on another quick exploratory excursion, this time finding bedroom after bedroom, each decorated with its own specific theme and style. None of the lavish rooms appeared lived in, so Kimberly suspected they were all guest rooms.
Searching for the master bedroom, she glanced over her shoulder to find Max, still looking irritated at her amazement. But she didn't care. This place was too fabulous, and she thought that if he was smart, he'd let her get the wonderment out of her system before their guest arrived later.
In the meantime, she was ready to unload the garment bag. "Um, where is our—"
"That way." He pointed to the end of the hall she hadn't yet approached, and she headed in that direction, instantly glad he hadn't let her finish the sentence. She was overwhelmed enough at the moment without being forced to start thinking about their sleeping arrangements.
She burst through the double doors that led to the master suite and released a heartfelt gasp, completely thunderstruck by what lay before her. Four tall, polished cherry posts emerged from the enormous bed. Wrought-iron bars connected the posts at the top from which a wide swath of filmy white fabric cascaded like a chiffon waterfall. Beneath the canopy, the lavishly dressed bed was adorned with more throw pillows than Kimberly had ever seen in one place. The bedroom's cathedral ceiling featured skylights, and a small fireplace graced one corner of the room, where two stylish easy chairs sat on either side of a low marble table.
Kimberly flung her garment bag on the bed and spun to face Max, who lingered in the doorway. "Have you seen this? It's gorgeous!"
But it would seem that Max never smiled anymore. "That it is," he agreed dryly, stepping into the room and lowering her suitcase to the floor. "You'll also find a huge master bath with a tub set in marble and a walk-in closet big enough to be a bedroom.
But, Brandt, you own all this stuff
. So it's no big deal, remember? Get used to it."
She hated his tone. Did he have to take all the fun out of
everything?
"Relax," she snipped at him. "I
will
get used to it. And I'll know every inch of it by heart before tonight. But for now, is it so horrible for you to let me enjoy it for a minute?"
"I'm not paying you to enjoy anything. I'm paying you to do what you're supposed to do. Think you can handle that?"
She turned to look at him. He'd just succeeded in draining every bit of youthful joy from her heart. She didn't say anything—she didn't have to. His little innuendo was completely clear. "Then I guess we'd better get to work," she finally said, using her most mocking tone.
But when would she learn? A little mocking never daunted Max. "Yes. We'd better."
Max then showed Kimberly the dresser drawers and closet space that had been cleared for her. The idea of putting her things in places that really belonged to other people seemed a little creepy, but she took it in stride. And she tried to hide her astonishment at the size of the closet, too, lest Max think she was having too good a time on the job.
"Most importantly," Max told her as he crossed the room, "is this." He lifted a painting from the wall and revealed a safe. "The combination is simple. Thirty, thirty-one, thirty-two." Even more simple to remember, Kimberly thought, since she'd just turned thirty.
She watched as Max turned the knob on the lock three times, then opened the safe door and pulled out a round black velvet box that measured at least a foot in diameter. He thrust it into her hands and she reached down to lift the lid.
"What's in— Oh!" Inside, diamonds and a few emeralds and sapphires sparkled against the dark velvet. Kimberly gaped at the jewels, then raked her hand through them to scoop up necklaces and bracelets that dripped like streams of shimmering water through her fingers.
"Fake, of course," Max pointed out.
She'd figured that, but they were still beautiful. "What if our guy's a jewelry expert?"
"Good question," he said, and the way things were going, she was surprised he'd conceded something even as small as that. "They're not
cheap
fakes. They're as good as fake gets, supplied by my client. Unless Carlo has a jeweler's loupe in his pocket, he won't be able to tell. Besides, his thefts are sudden and quick—he doesn't have time to analyze the goods. So we should be fine on that count."
Kimberly closed the box and handed it back to Max, who returned it to the safe and locked the door. "Practice opening the safe later," he told her, "and familiarize yourself with the jewelry so you'll know how all the clasps work and that sort of thing."
She nodded, then turned toward the garment bags that lay on the bed. The bed that they would supposedly …
share?
She guessed it was time to bite the bullet, act professional, and ask him just what his plans were for that. "Where … um, will everyone sleep?" She posed the question casually with her back to him.
"Everyone?"
"Well, you and me. And Carlo," she added, turning to face him. "And while we're on the subject, just why does he think you've invited him here?"
"Stocks," Max answered confidently. "Carlo wants to learn about the stock market and I'm just the guy to teach him."
"You are?"
"I know enough to fake it. When he expressed an interest, I suggested we get together one evening. I'd been hanging out with him for a few nights by then, so it didn't seem odd to invite him to dinner."
"And why does he think he's spending the night?"
"He doesn't necessarily, yet. But according to all the victims I've talked with, he gets chummy fast and then finds a way to prod the invitation."
Kimberly nodded, then realized she'd never let Max answer her original question. Her chest tightened as she brought it back up. "So, about the sleeping arrangements…"
"Carlo will sleep in one of the guest rooms," Max said. "You and I, of course, will sleep in here."
She looked back and forth between him and the bed, half surprised at his answer, and half surprised that she actually thought it sounded like such an awful idea. After all, despite the front she was putting up, in her heart of hearts, she'd almost already admitted to herself that the idea of sleeping next to Max turned her insides to jelly, no matter how much he disliked her. Now, however, faced with doing just that, her muscles tensed and her stomach churned. And if being with Max was something she really wanted, would it make her feel sick like this? So maybe she really was capable of not thinking of him like that. But she could ponder that later. Right now she had to deal with the matter at hand. "Do you think that's … appropriate?"
"Not particularly," he said. "But husbands and wives generally sleep together. Sleeping apart wouldn't do much to uphold our cover."
"Well, maybe we could just
pretend
to sleep together, but then later you could sneak out and use one of the guest rooms." She thought it was a pretty good suggestion.
Max shook his head. "He might get up in the night and realize we weren't together. It would look too suspicious. What if he were to look into the room while we're sleeping or something?"
Kimberly grimaced. "You think that's possible?"
"How would I know? The guy's a creep. Anything's possible. Which reminds me, we need to talk about actually nailing this jerk."
Well, Kimberly thought with a sigh, it would seem they'd settled that situation—sort of—so on to the next item of business. She lowered herself onto the ornate bed. "I'm listening."
"The only thing Carlo's seductions have in common is that he moves in for the kill when the husband's not home, and he ends up getting out of the house with jewelry, usually without the woman's knowledge at first. In one case, the woman went to take a shower after they'd slept together—taking off her jewelry beforehand—and when she came back, he was gone, along with the gems. Like I told you before, he actually took the jewelry off
my
client while she was sleeping. Another woman chose to refuse his advances, which is what will happen with you. She ran out of the room, at which point Carlo must have wiped her dresser clean of all the jewels, except what she was wearing."
"So I'll refuse his advances. But where will
you
be?"
"This is going to be a carefully orchestrated operation, Brandt. When the time comes to reel him in, I'll pretend to leave—to go to the office for some emergency or something—but I won't really leave. I'll actually be in the closet," he said, motioning to it. "Then you'll invite him into the bedroom to see the view from the balcony."
At this, Kimberly rose from the bed and padded over to check out the view. She hadn't realized it, but the balcony overlooked the pool and beyond that, a vast treed valley that stretched for miles, dotted with only two or three other mansions.
"I'll be videotaping the theft," Max continued, "and I'll also be there just in case you have any trouble fending the guy off. Hopefully, he'll take no for an answer, but use the opportunity to swipe the jewelry anyway."
Kimberly nodded. Sounded pretty simple.
"Any questions, Brandt?"
"None."
"All right then. I'll give you a few minutes to unpack your stuff." With that, he was out the door and Kimberly was alone in this fabulous room where a crime would soon take place. And where she and Max would soon share a bed. The thought bothered her more and more, actually making her stomach clench in pain. She didn't want to sleep next to Max tonight. Or any other night. There were simply too many old emotions involved. Old emotions that no longer mattered.

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