A Touch of Minx

AVON BOOKS

An Imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

10 East 53rd Street

New York, New York 10022-5299

Copyright © 2007 by Suzanne Enoch

Excerpts from Love Letters From a Duke copyright © 2007 by

Elizabeth Boyle; A Touch of Minx copyright © 2007 by Suzanne

Enoch; Halfway to the Grave copyright © 2007 by Jeaniene Frost;

Lord of Scoundrels copyright © 1995 by Loretta Chekani

ISBN: 978-0-06-087523-7

ISBN-10: 0-06-087523-2

www.avonromance.com

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information address Avon Books, an Imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.

First Avon Books paperback printing: October 2007

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Palm Beach, Florida

Thursday, 11:28 p.m.

Samantha Jellicoe crouched between a full suit of sixteenth-century Prussian armor and a life-size terra cotta warrior from the tomb of Qin Shi Huang. Footsteps entered the dark hallway a few yards beyond her and she stilled, keeping her breathing slow and deep.

"I know you're here," the deep voice said in a slightly faded British accent. "You may as well give up now."

No friggin' way. If he had any idea where she was, he would have found her already. Richard Addison might be a high-powered billionaire, a great white shark in the world of business, but where creeping around in the dark was concerned, he was a rank amateur.

She, on the other hand, had gone professional well before her tenth birthday. Resisting the instinct to back deeper into the shadows as he approached, she took a breath and held it. Adrenaline pumped into her system, making her want to move, make a run for it. That, though, wasn't part of the plan.

"You'll never make it," Addison's voice taunted. "All I have to do is stand in front of the door, and you lose."

He paused, his bare feet shifting in a slow circle about a dozen feet from where she crouched behind good old Colonel Klink's shield. If he'd had a flashlight with him she would have been done for, but she knew him, knew that his pride would consider a flashlight to be cheating. She'd counted on that, and had made her plans with his large ego in mind.

"Okay, have it your way," he continued. "I just thought it might be less humiliating for you to give up than for me to find you."

That was probably true, but obviously his chances of finding her weren't all that he claimed they were. As soon as his footsteps resumed down a side hallway she moved, springing down one flight of stairs and dashing into the first door on the left. Technically she could already have been out of the house with a million plus in merchandise, but the Matisse and the fourteenth-century Turkish tapestry weren't on her list. Neither were any other of the hundred-odd other pieces of art and antiques inside the three-acre expanse of Solano Dorado.

Still working in the dark, Samantha walked to the far corner of the library and unlatched the window there. Normally the alarm would have gone off, but she knew for a fact that the whole system was down. She smiled as she slipped out the window and onto the two-inch-wide ledge running along the wall. Now this was fun.

Reaching back, she pushed the window closed again. She couldn't latch it, but unless he came in very close he would never know anyone had unlocked it. Since she also knew that the power was out for at least the next twenty minutes, she had the early October darkness working in her favor, too.

Edging sideways another six or seven feet with her back to the wall, she stopped as she came opposite one of the ubiquitous palm trees surrounding the mansion and the entire walled-in estate. This one stood about five feet in front of her, and climbed about sixty feet into the air. "Okay, Sam," she muttered, drew a breath, and pushed out from the ledge.

For a second she hung in the air before she smacked into the palm's trunk and wrapped her arms and legs around it. That would have hurt if she hadn't worn jeans and a long-sleeved shirt. Black, of course; not only was the dark color slimming, but it was the clothing of choice for disappearing into shadows. Sucking in another breath, she shimmied up the rough trunk until she was about four feet above the house's roof.

The roof here at the back of the house was flat and had a very nice skylight set into the ceiling of the room she needed to get into. Glancing over her shoulder to make sure she was lined up, she pushed off backward, twisting in midair to land on her hands and knees on the rooftop. Keeping her forward momentum going, she somersaulted and came up onto her feet.

Normally speed wasn't as important as stealth, but tonight she needed to get into Richard Addison's office be-fore he tracked her down. And for an amateur, he had a pretty good nose for larceny. Of course she was a damned bloodhound, if she said so herself.

With another smile she crouched in front of the skylight and leaned over to peer into the dark office space below. Just because he'd announced that he would wait for her to show up outside the door didn't mean that he'd done so. The padlock he'd put on the skylight stopped her for about twelve seconds, most of that taken up by the time it took her to dig the paper clip out of her pocket.

Setting the lock aside, she unlatched the skylight and carefully shoved it open, gripping the edge to lean in head first. The large room with its conference table, desk, and sitting area at one end looked empty, and her Spider-Man senses weren't wigging out.

Pushing off with her feet, she flipped head over hands and landed in the middle of the room, bending her knees to cushion her landing and cut down on any sound. A small black box topped by a red bow sat on the desk, but after a glance and a quick wrestling match with her curiosity, she walked past it to the refrigerator set into the credenza and pulled out a Diet Coke. Deliberately she walked to the office door, leaned against the frame, and popped the soda tab.

A second later she heard the distinctive sound of a key sliding into a lock, and the door handle flipped down. "Surprise," she said, taking a swallow of soda.

The tall, black-haired Englishman stopped just inside the doorway and glared at her. Blue eyes darkened to black in the dimness, but she didn't need light to read his expression. Annoyed. Rick Addison didn't like to be bested.

"You used the skylight, didn't you?" he said, making the sentence a statement rather than a question. "Yep."

"I padlocked it an hour ago."

"Hello," she returned, handing him the Diet Coke, "thief. Remember?"

"Retired thief." He took a drink and gave it back to her before he continued past her to the desk. "You didn't peek?"

"Nope. The thought never crossed my mind." Well, it had, but she hadn't given in, so that counted. "I wouldn't ruin your surprise."

When he faced her again, his mouth relaxed into a slight smile. "I was certain you'd attempt to get around me in the gallery hall."

"I went out through the library window. If I'da been a bomb, you would have been blowed up, slick."

Grabbing her by the front of the shirt, he yanked her up against him, bent his face down, and kissed her. Adrenaline flowed into arousal, and she kissed him back, pulling off her black leather gloves to tangle her bare fingers into his dark hair. A successful B and E was a lot like sex, and when she could actually combine the two, hoo baby.

"You smell like palm tree," he muttered, sweeping her legs out from under her and lowering her onto the gray carpeted floor.

"How do you think I got in here?"

Rick's hands paused on their trek up under her shirt. "You climbed up the palm tree?"

"It's the fastest way to go." She pulled his face down over hers again, yanking open the fly of his jeans with her free hand. She loved his body, the feel of his skin against hers. It amazed her that a guy who spent his days sitting at conference tables and computers and arguing over pieces of paper could have the body of a professional soccer player, but he did. And he knew how to use it, too.

He backed off a little again. "This was supposed to be fun, Samantha. Not you climbing up a tree and jumping onto a roof thirty feet in the air."

"That is fun, Brit. Quit stalling. I want my present." She shoved her hand down the front of his pants. "Mm, feels like you want to give it to me, too."

With a moan he settled onto his knees, balancing, as he pulled her shirt off over her head. Her bra followed, landing somewhere beside the conference table. Rick slipped out of his own shirt before he lowered his head again, flicking his tongue across her nipples while his busy hands opened her black jeans and yanked them down to her knees. "Black thongs," he breathed, sliding a hand between the panties and her skin.

"Surprise again," she returned, shoving his pants and boxers down past his thighs and kicking her own jeans off the rest of the way. The man had a serious thing for her underwear, thankfully only when she was in it. She'd never enjoyed shopping at Victoria's Secret as much as she had since they'd met.

He kissed the base of her jaw, chuckling at her sigh. "You are so easy," he murmured, slipping his fingers under the band of her thongs and stripping them off her.

"What would Entertainment Tonight say if they knew you were doing it on your office floor when you have twenty bedrooms?"

Slowly he pushed forward, entering her. "They would say, 'That lucky Addison bloke,'" he breathed, '"having sex with the beautiful, gorgeous, funny, brilliant, multi-talented Samantha Jellicoe.'"

"It can't be flattery," she moaned, laughing breathlessly, "because you've already got my underwear off."

"Talk later," he returned, nibbling on her ear as he thrust. "Sex now."

Like she was going to argue with that. Samantha lifted her hips in time with his humping, wrapping her ankles into his thighs. She loved when he was like this, too eager, too aroused to even think straight. And nothing got him hotter than a little B and E on her part—which made the whole encouraging and supporting her retirement from the game just a little problematic.

As her brain shut down she dug her fingers into his shoulders, arching her back and squealing as she came. "You feel so good when you come for me," Rick grunted, lowering his head against her neck and increasing his pace. A second later he shuddered, growling.

"So do you, Brit," she managed, every bone and muscle going loose and disconnected as he relaxed on top of her. Rick sex—there was nothing like it in the world.

He rolled them so that he lay underneath and she could sprawl across his chest to listen to the hard, fast beating of his heart. For somebody like her who'd spent most of her life looking over her shoulder, ready to fade into the shadows with a few seconds' notice, the safety and satisfaction Rick brought her was just… indescribable.

Overhead the lights blinked on, blinding after the gloom. The fax machine on the credenza beeped and whirred to life, and the computer on the desk played the first four notes of "Rule Britannia" to announce that it lived.

"Ah, my natural habitat," Rick murmured, twining strands of her hair loosely around his fingers. "The soothing sounds of technology."

"With all of the antiques and your Sir Galahad rep, I still picture you more as the Henry the Eighth type. You know, before he got fat and crazy and married all those girls."

"I'm not certain I like the comparison even with the exceptions," he returned, his British drawl amused, "but IT live with it. So, my heart, do you know what today is?"

Of course she knew. Aside from her having a nearly photographic memory, he'd been hinting at it for the past two weeks. "I like to hear you tell it," she said, raising up to kiss his chin. "But first I think I should point out that with the lights on and the blinds open, your security patrol outside is probably—"

"Shit," he muttered, grabbing his jeans. "I thought you gave them the night off. I didn't know we were starring in Nudity at Night,"

Samantha eyed him as she pulled his T-shirt over her naked body. "Sure. I disable the entire estate security system, so at the same time I send away the only guys between the big bad world and you."

"And me?" he repeated, standing and reaching down a hand to pull her to her feet. "I'll worry about me. I thought you put all these security upgrades in to protect my Matisse and the Remingtons and the—"

She stopped the recitation with a kiss. "I know what you own, Rick," she said against his mouth. "And I think I've mentioned before that those things are not why I'm here."

"But they are," he returned, lifting the small black box off his desk and taking her hand. "Because as I started to say before you pointed out that we were engaged in some naked performance art, today is our one-year anniversary."

Samantha grinned. "Technically it's in about two hours."

Still holding her hand, he led the way out of the office and up the stairs to the master bedroom suite they shared He liked to touch her, and considering the occasion the)

were celebrating this evening, the contact was just as important to her. If things had gone just a little differently that night…

"You saved my life," he said on the tail end of her thoughts.

"I was trying to rob you."

"But you didn't have to tackle me right when the bomb went off," Rick countered, drawing her down onto the couch beside him in the large sitting area of the suite.

And at the time she'd wondered whether saving the life of a very wealthy, very influential witness hadn't been the stupidest thing she'd ever done. Even if that had turned out to be the case, though, and contrary to her father Martin Jellicoe's lifelong lesson that nothing was as important as looking out for number one, she didn't think she would have regretted it. "Yes, I did," she said. "Now give me my present. My other present."

Snorting, he handed her the box. Pretending that she wasn't just a little bit nervous about what might be inside, Samantha pulled the end of the ribbon to untie the bow. "It's not cursed or anything, is it?"

"I've learned my lesson about that." Leaning over, he kissed the base of her jaw. "This is voodoo priestess and witch doctor certified safe."