Billionaires Prefer Blondes (11 page)

“So you’ll have to find a new goose. You’ve been with him for what, six months? You’ve—”

“Five,” she corrected stiffly.

“Whatever. You’ve probably squeezed everything out of him you can. He’ll notice the furniture’s missing, eventually.”

She didn’t try to explain her relationship with Rick. Martin wouldn’t get it, anyway. Whatever the hell he had going on, though, she wasn’t going to take the fall for it. She knew how he played the game. Apart for six years or not, some things never changed. The one lesson he was best at, the one he’d taught her first and repeated most often, was to look out for yourself first. Which meant she had better do the same—except that in her new world, that included Rick. “Who hired you for the Hogarth?” she asked.

“That’s none of your business. Just do your shopping and partying and I’ll go on with my thing.”

“Until you decide to reappear in the middle of my shit again? I don’t think so, Martin.” Forcing her muscles to relax, she sat down again. “You could have grabbed the painting from Sotheby’s. You wanted to take it from
my
house, and you waited until I went out to meet you before you made your play. So you tell me what the hell’s going on, Dad. You
think I stepped into the middle of your shit? You just stomped all over mine. And I don’t like it.”

The charm left his gaze for a moment. “Watch your mouth, Sam. I don’t have to explain anything to you.”

“It seems like a fair question to me, Martin,” Stoney put in. “She could go to jail.”

“That won’t happen,” Martin said dismissively, reaching over to take one of Samantha’s slices of pizza and Mr. In-Control again. “If you thought it would, you’d be on your way to Paris or Milan.”

Not if it meant abandoning Rick—and especially when her flight would make things worse for him. “There has to be a reason,” she said slowly, “that you would vanish into thin air and then decide to reappear now, when Stoney and I didn’t even have a clue that you were alive, much less still in the business.” Flattery worked miracles on some of her marks; she didn’t see why it couldn’t work on Martin.

“Let’s just say some people saw that it would benefit them more to have me out of prison than to try to keep me behind bars.”

He had escaped from various facilities at least twice that she knew of. Who would find it more advantageous to have him running around free instead of keeping him in tougher and thereby more expensive facilities? Someone whom he was costing money. “You’re working for the government?” she whispered, unable to keep herself from glancing around the restaurant.

“Smart as ever, aren’t you, Sam? It’s not exactly the government, though. I’ve been helping Interpol.” He grinned, the jaunty I’m-the-smartest-guy-in-the-room expression she used to see on him every time he successfully pulled off a tricky job.

“Excuse me,” Stoney cut in again, skepticism dripping from his deep voice, “but how does stealing from Rick Addison help Interpol?”

“Remember the job at the Louvre last year?” Martin took a large bite of Samantha’s pepperoni pizza.

“That wasn’t you,” she countered flatly. “The news said at least four guys were involved. They shot and killed a security guard.”

“Right. They ticked off Interpol, and so they made me a deal.
I
found out who the Louvre guys were, and I’ve been working my way into the crew. I just needed to set up one last quick score worth a couple million, and ta-da, I’m part of the team.”

“So you let me see you at the auction, waited for me to set up a meeting, and then went into my house while I was out, just so you could get in with a crew of hoods?”

“
Your
house?” he repeated, his grin deepening. “And they’re hardly hoods. They’re some talented guys—that’s why Interpol needs me. Now that the crew trusts me, all I have to do is rat out their next job, and I get to settle into happy retirement under a new name in a warm country. I’m thinking Monaco, maybe as John Robie.”

John Robie
. Cary Grant’s character from
To Catch a Thief
. Martin had always imagined himself as that guy, Samantha knew, even though she considered that his reality fell far short of the fantasy.

“I want the Hogarth back, Martin. Go make your reputation on somebody else’s hide. Not mine.”

“Too late. I’m not the one who took it, anyway. I just set it up.”

Samantha went cold. “You let the guys who shot a security guard break into my house with Rick there?” she snapped. It was one thing thinking Martin had gone in; despicable, but
at least like her, he never carried a gun. A crew of killers, though…“Jesus Christ, Martin.”

“Keep your voice down, Sam. And just leave this alone. After Interpol grabs the crew, you’ll probably get the art back.”

“Like they’d hold on to it for that long,” Stoney grunted. “Nobody keeps something that hot for any longer than they have to. Trust me, it’s how I make some of my best deals.” He glanced at Samantha. “How I used to make some of my best deals,” he corrected. “I’m retired.”

“It’s not that long. Leave it alone, and leave me alone, and maybe I’ll invite you to my retirement party. If you go after the Hogarth, they’ll know I told you about it, and you can come to my next funeral, too, Sam. For real, this time.”

With that he stood and left the pizzeria. For a long moment Samantha and Stoney sat there looking at each other. “What the fuck am I supposed to do now?” she ground out, slamming her fist against the table. “He just shows up, and suddenly I’m twelve and he’s the grand master Jedi of cat burglars again? Has he ever done anything straight in his life?”

“Not that I know of. And I’m thinking Hong Kong, honey,” Stoney returned. “On a slow boat.”

She blew out her breath. “Like a rowboat.”

Her cell phone sang the James Bond theme. Rick. She flipped it open, her heart beating wildly. Great. It wasn’t like he could have seen her there talking with her supposedly dead father. “Hi, sweetie,” she said, keeping her voice cool and steady. “Did you change your mind about lunch?”

“No. I’m pretending to be on the phone with Trump about doing a deal together. You should see Hoshido’s guys. They’ve already given up the top eight floors of the Manhattan.”

She cracked a smile. “You’re so lame.”

“The hell you say. How’s shopping going?”

Crap
. “I’m more just looking.” She stopped for a moment. What could she tell him without screwing up whatever she might need to hide from him later? He would expect something. Sam Jellicoe didn’t have many dull days. “You’ll be happy to know that some plainclothes cops tried to follow my cab.”

“Did they, now?” he returned, his voice sharper. She could picture him sitting down, leaning forward over his desk. “And?”

“I lost ’em. Changed cabs, put on a moustache.”

“Samantha, I’m glad this is amusing to you, but—”

”It’s not. Actually, I’m not really sure how I’m supposed to react to all this. I’ve never been in this situation before.”

“I know. Me neither. Hey, I picked up a present for you. Something for after dinner.”

“Ooh, naughty.” Across the table Stoney rolled his eyes, and she stuck her tongue out at him. “Can you give me a hint?”

“No. I’ll be home about six.”

“I should be back by then, too.”

“I love you, Yank.”

“Me, too, Brit.” She hung up.

“What are you going to tell him, Sam?” Stoney finally gave up on pretending that he was eating his salad and pushed it away. “Because whatever Martin’s up to, throwing Addison into the middle of it can’t be good.”

“No shit.” She took a breath. “I don’t know what I’m going to tell him. ‘Sorry, my dad’s back in business and he wants everything of yours that’s not nailed down’ doesn’t sound very reassuring. I have to think about it. Can you stick around for a while?”

“I’m not going anywhere, honey. But be careful where
you go with this, or by the time the smoke clears I might be the only one left.”

“I know,” she muttered, picking up her pizza and dumping it into the nearby trash can. “Now I have to go buy something cute so Rick doesn’t think I’ve been up to anything evil.”

“I’ll see to it, Wilder,” Richard said, motioning the butler away from the front door.

“Very good, sir. Vilseau says dinner should be ready in twenty minutes.”

Wilder vanished back toward the kitchen, and Richard looked out the front window again. Samantha handed a few bills through the passenger window to the taxi driver, then straightened, hefted her Bloomingdale’s bag, and headed for the door. Former thief, current theft suspect, she made his heart speed the same way she had when she’d dropped through his ceiling five months ago to propose a business partnership.

He pulled open the door. “Good evening.”

“What did you get me?” she asked, pulling his face down with her free hand and giving him a ferocious kiss.

Still attached at the mouth, he somehow remembered to close and lock the front door. Not that locks mattered much to most of her acquaintances. He pushed her back against the door, taking the shopping bag from her hand and dropping it to the floor. Her freed hand immediately went to his belt, to be joined by the other as she undid his zipper.

“What’s all this, then?” he murmured, groaning as she reached into the front of his jeans, kneading and stroking.

“I want you.”

With her hand still in his pants, they stumbled into the front sitting room. Richard closed the door with one foot as they fell over the side of the sofa onto the floor. “Slow down,
sweetheart,” he said, as she pulled his jeans down past his thighs and then shoved him over onto his back. “I’m not going anywhere.”

“I don’t want to slow down.”

Wriggling, she undid her own slacks and kicked them off, her cute blue panties following. With a gasping moan she sank down onto him. Lifting his head, breathing hard, Richard watched as his cock disappeared into her, inch by inch, in a hot, tight slide. Whatever the devil was going on, he wasn’t going to argue.

She lifted up and down on him, hard and fast. Fighting for a tiny measure of control, Richard slid his hand up under her blouse to caress her pert breasts as she bounced. Going along for the ride, as he felt her come he lay back and pushed his hips up into her until with a growl he joined her.

Samantha fell forward across his chest, kissing him again. “That wasn’t very dignified, was it?” she panted, shoving her arms around behind his back and holding herself to him tightly.

“Dignified, no. Fun, yes,” he returned, hugging her back.

She wasn’t much for tight embraces and being held captive, and at this second her obvious and desperate affection frightened the hell out of him. For a long moment she held on to him, her cheek against his chest. It felt as though she was actually listening to his heartbeat.

“Not that I mind this in the least,” he said quietly, reluctant to give up the intimacy but worried enough that he had to ask, “but is something troubling you, Sam?”

Her breath caught, then began again. Slowly she nodded against his chest.
Christ.

Okay, it was bad. Calculating how hard he should push and how she would react, he decided to cajole her into talking. “You’re not sick, are you?”

“No,” she said, her voice muffled against his shirt.

So far, so good. “I’m not sick, am I?”

“No.”

“No one’s died?”

“No. No one at all.”

Nearly complete sentences now. That seemed like an improvement. Keeping his voice calm and quiet and the questions over the top and nonthreatening, he kept talking. “You haven’t stolen anything that will force you to flee the country?”

“I haven’t stolen anything.”

“Stoney hasn’t been arrested again?”

“No.”

“Someone you know has stolen something that will force them to flee the country?”

She sat up, looking down at him through the tangle of her auburn hair. She’d been letting it grow out a little, and he found the additional few inches extremely sexy. “I have to think about some things,” she said slowly.

“Can you tell me about it?”

“Not now.”

“Ever?”

“That’s what I’m thinking about. Don’t push it, okay?”

He thought about it for a moment, difficult as that was with him still inside her. She’d just admitted that something was going on. If he agreed not to ask any questions, was he giving her some sort of permission to carry on with whatever it was? They were both in a tight bind at the moment. “Can you promise me that this thing you’re thinking about isn’t putting your life in immediate peril?”

Samantha nodded. “I can promise that.”

“I’ll give you a little time, then, Sam, but I won’t back off indefinitely. Obviously with us together, what affects you,
affects me. And you know you can tell me anything. Anything.”

“You should probably rethink that,” she returned. “There may just be some things you don’t
want
to know.”

Richard held her gaze for a long moment. Well as he’d come to know her, there were still times she was impossible to read. This was obviously one of them. Was there something she could say that would make him wish to distance himself from her? Considering her answers to his previous questions, he couldn’t imagine what it would be. Still, she hardly lived a conventional life, even when she spent the day shopping at Bloomingdale’s.

“You can still tell me anything.”

“Give me a day or two.”

“Deal.”
And not a second longer than that
.

Slowly she leaned down and kissed him once more. “Thank you.” Samantha straightened again. “So where’s my present?”

He snorted, despite his worry. She definitely kept him on his toes, even when he was flat on his back. “It’s on the dining room table.”

She stood, and he climbed to his feet, as well. At this moment, he supposed all he could do was wait for the next blow, and arm himself with all the information and ammunition he could before it came.

Thursday, 8:40 p.m.

“S
o who’s that?” Richard asked, pointing at the plasma television screen.

“That’s Rodan. We’ve discussed him before.”

“He looks different.”

“You’re right; he does.” Samantha sat forward. “Oh, cool. They updated him. His neck even moves now.”

“You’re fairly easy to please, my dear.”

“No, I’m not. And stop trying to distract me. Rodan’s destroying New York.” She hopped on the cushion. “Oh, and look! That’s the U.S. version of Godzilla they have attacking Sidney. That’s totally him! The Matthew Broderick one.”

“As if I could distract you. I’m resigned to playing second fiddle to Godzilla.” Richard sat back on the sofa beside her, his pulse thudding as Samantha curled into his left side and pulled his arm across her shoulders. Focused as he was about touching her at every opportunity, tonight he felt like he was
in heaven. She held his hand, twiddling absently with his fingers, while he did the only thing he could to calm and reassure her when she wouldn’t tell him what troubled her—hold her on her terms, and let her watch Godzilla.

“Thank you again for the DVD,” she said a moment later. “How did you know I’d never seen this one?”

“I asked around. It was only released a few months ago, and it’s never been on American cable.” The Blockbuster Video clerk had recognized him and had clearly thought him insane when he’d asked for the movie monster section, but
Godzilla—Final Wars
had clearly been the right choice.

Across the hall his office phone rang, but he ignored it. The machine would pick up the call, and he had no intention of leaving the sofa without Samantha. Not tonight; not when he’d begun to think that she might be considering taking him into her confidence.

“What if that’s the hotel guy?” she asked, twisting her head to look up at him.

“Then it can wait until tomorrow.”

Thirty seconds later his cell phone rang. “Maybe he needs his top eight floors back,” she suggested, cracking her quicksilver grin.

“Smart ass.” He shifted to grab the phone. “Addison.”

“Where the hell are you?” Tom Donner’s voice came.

“At the opera,” Rick returned dryly.

“Crap. I’m sor—Wait a minute. I hear Godzilla. You’re watching some movie with Jellicoe.”

Richard shifted the phone to his right ear. “I had no idea you were a fan.”

“I’ve got a fourteen-year-old boy, remember? Mike has all the video games. Can you talk, Rick?”

“Briefly.”

“Okay. I stopped by Jellicoe’s office to check on things,
like you asked. Aubrey’s got everything under control. Would Jellicoe care if I tried to hire him away?”

“Good, and yes. I’ll—”

“So then I kind of casually asked about Walter, since he wasn’t there.”

From the dramatic pause, Richard was obviously supposed to be anticipating something. “And?” he prompted.

“Barstone’s not in town. Told Aubrey he was taking a long weekend, and booked a flight somewhere. And before you say I’m just gossiping or something, he took off all in a hurry about two hours after you busted Jellicoe out of jail.”

Bloody hell
. He’d suspected that Samantha had begun looking for the missing Hogarth. Walter’s disappearance from Florida didn’t constitute proof, but it was a disturbing bit of coincidence, as far as he was concerned. “That’s great,” he said aloud. “I’ll send you the next set of demands as soon as they come in. Give Kate a snog for me.”

“Donner?” Samantha asked as he flipped the phone closed.

He nodded. “He had a couple of questions about one of my e-mails.”

So Walter was probably somewhere in New York, and one or the other of them had found out something. Something serious enough to have the normally independent Samantha practically climbing inside him, and still unwilling to discuss any of it. He needed some bloody answers; remaining ignorant and waiting for the shit to hit the fan simply wasn’t his way of working.

Samantha sat up, carefully scooting off the edge of the bed while Rick snored softly beside her. Three o’clock in the morning. Go time, in the old days. Night owls would have gone to bed, and early birds weren’t up yet. A perfect time
for an enterprising cat burglar to slip in somewhere and grab the worm.

The rich brown bedroom curtains were closed against the streetlights, but about an inch of light showed along the near side. She edged up to the opening and looked out. A dozen or so cars were parked along the near side on the street within her line of sight. With no parking on the far side of the street, any surveillance would have to be either among those cars, or in one of the trees overlooking Central Park’s low brick wall.

Pissed off as Gorstein had been, and with the tail she’d shaken off this morning, she fully expected someone to be watching the townhouse. If they were smart and if they had it in the budget, they’d put somebody in the alley, too.

A minute later, she spotted it—a brief, round reflection of light coming through the rear window of a Honda. Binoculars. Boy, Gorstein took this catching-the-bad-guys thing seriously.

With a faint smile she reversed course and slipped out the bedroom door. They’d replaced the panel in the hall window again, and in the dark it didn’t look as though anyone had tampered with it. By leaning along the wall to one side of the window she had a pretty good view of the alley below. The two homeless guys with the cups of Starbucks coffee and the shoulder-holster bulges under their shirts looked pretty promising.

Good. For once she was glad of the surveillance. It still chilled her to the bone that Martin had sent the Louvre crew in here, knowing both that she was elsewhere and that they would kill. Maybe in her dad’s mind he’d been keeping her out of danger, but Rick had been there, asleep. Wilder and Ben and Vilseau slept downstairs in the old servants’ quarters, but if there’d been trouble, it would have involved Rick.
Her
Rick—at least until he found out that her own father had arranged for the theft of the painting. After that, all bets were off.

The bedroom door clicked open behind her, and she turned. In the corner there by the window he’d never see her. Out of instinct she froze into the shadows before she made herself relax. “Over here,” she said quietly.

He turned toward her, lowering his right hand at the same time.
Jesus
. He was carrying a pistol. She knew he owned a couple of them, but she hadn’t realized he’d brought one with him to New York. Briefly she wondered whether he would have done so if she hadn’t been living with him. He did know some bad guys, all on his own.

“What is it?” he asked, moving along the wall to avoid being seen from the window. He’d picked up some of her skills scary fast.

“Just checking on the cops,” she returned. “We’re surrounded.”

“Is that a problem for you in the middle of the night?”

Great
. He was mad again. “They followed me yesterday, Rick, and that is a problem. I wanted to know if they were still around. Don’t you?”

He blew out his breath. “Yes. If they’re here, they’re not out looking for my bloody painting and whoever took it.”

For once that hadn’t even occurred to her. If Martin had been dead, he would have been spinning in his grave. Hell, she’d actually been happy that the cops were around, and hadn’t even considered that their presence meant she was still suspect numero uno.

If she told Rick that she knew who’d stolen the painting—not names, yet, but she had a pretty good idea—he would demand that she go to Gorstein with the information. She could get around mentioning Martin, but if the NYPD was
lucky enough to bring in the Louvre crew for taking one painting rather than for the big score they were planning, it could negate her dad’s deal with Interpol. In addition, this crew killed. She could be putting Martin’s life at risk. Complicated as her relationship with her father was, she didn’t want to attend a second funeral for him.

Silently Rick swept her hair forward over her shoulder and feather-light kissed the back of her neck. “I’ll make a call in the morning and see if I can convince Detective Gorstein to do his bloody job, even if that means telling him to forget this one.”

“Like you’d let anybody get away with stealing from you.”

“There are other ways to handle that. A private detective might be more useful, under the circumstances.”

Under the circumstances meaning that the cops wouldn’t stop bugging her
. Great. “Rick, you don’t—”

“Come back to bed, Yank,” he interrupted. “It’s cold there without you.”

She took his proffered hand, and he pulled her close against his side. There had to be a way she could clear herself, get the painting back, not compromise Martin—and not lose this man. There had to be.

“Tell me again why we’re meeting here?” Stoney asked, taking a turn around the vast, echoing entrance hall.

“I’m basking in the glory of art.” Samantha glanced toward the security and information desk. Three guys guarding the entrance of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. She could get around them in a damned second. The cameras would be harder, but—

“And the real story is?”

She shook herself. There she went, casing joints again.

“Fine. My cushy townhouse is surrounded by cops. I needed to get out of there.” And it had felt good to lose the tail again on her way to the museum. They might know where she slept every night, but the day was her own damned business.

“Are you sure they didn’t follow you, then?” The ex-fence looked over his shoulder for what seemed like the hundredth time.

She smirked at him. “Give me a break. Let’s head for the European Impressionists.”

“Works for me.” He fell into step beside her. “I’ve been thinking. If Martin’s telling the truth, then Interpol
will
probably recover the Hogarth and get it back to your guy. That puts Addison back out of the picture, and you out of trouble with the cops. The end.”

“Like you care about the Hogarth. You’re just looking for something that’ll keep me from telling Rick what’s going on.”

“And you’re trying to convince yourself to let him in on this. Big mistake, honey. Trust me. Huge mistake.”

“He can’t blame me for Martin being alive. I didn’t know.” She wrapped her arm through Stoney’s so she could lower her voice. “But if Martin’s only requirement to get in with this crew was to arrange for a painting to go missing, he didn’t have to pick the Hogarth. I can’t help thinking that he chose it because of me. He sure didn’t
not
choose it because of me. And that’s what Rick’ll start worrying about—that whether I’m straight or not, the piranhas are going to come around nibbling, just because I’m there. And I’m not all that sure he’d be wrong.”

“I’m telling you, lie to him, Sam.”

She slowed in front of one of the Monets. That should have been the logical solution—she used to lie all the time, about who she was, about what she was doing at a particular
party or event. Not to Rick, though. She didn’t like lying to Rick. Maybe it was guilt, or fear of being caught at it later, but she didn’t think so. Rick was new; that life was new. And she didn’t want to wreck it. Which brought her back to lying again. “I owe him enough that I don’t think I can.”

“You’re happy with Addison, and if you tell him all this, he won’t be happy with you. And then
I
won’t be happy. Don’t do it.”

She shook her head. “It’s a question of loyalty. And until Martin showed up again, I knew I would stand up for you, and I’d stand up for Rick. So now I’m wondering why…. What do I owe him? Martin, I mean?”

“He’s your dad, honey. You shouldn’t even be talking like that. Just because he’s not a grocer or a pilot or something, he raised you with what he knew. And you’re the best damned cat I’ve ever seen. Ever.”

“Thanks, Stoney.” She gripped his arm hard. “But I’m not so sure that…what I like about myself—what Rick likes about me—is because of Martin.” She cleared her throat. “So is your advice really that I should just stand back and do nothing? Do you really think I should lie to Rick?”

“Shit,” he muttered, turning away to look across the room for a long moment. “I don’t know.”

Man, they were both becoming a pair of saps. Who would have thought? “I’m going to tell him,” she decided, realizing that she’d probably made that decision the moment Martin had appeared in the pizzeria. “I might have to move in with you back in Palm Beach, though.”

“You can have the spare bedroom. Unless you think we should try living in Paris. We could make a ton of money in Paris.”

Samantha shook her head, smiling. “We already have a
ton of money. And I don’t think you should be talking about robberies
in the middle of an art museum
.”

“Right. My bad.” He took a deep breath. “So what do you want to do with your last day of being in the spotlight?”

She suppressed a shudder. She could do without the spotlight. Just not the reason for it. “Let’s go see the French Masters.”

“Cool.”

“Let me make something clear, Detective,” Richard said, pacing to his office window and back. Anger clipped his words; Samantha said the emotion made him sound even more British, which he didn’t consider to be possible, since he was already one hundred percent British. “Samantha Jellicoe did not take my painting.
I
did not take my painting. And you know that, or you would have gotten that warrant and searched my home again.”

“I’m not going to tell you how my investigation is go—”

“Considering that you have absolutely no evidence other than some theory that Samantha must be involved in something underhanded because her father was a thief, I’m beginning to see a situation where I might bring charges against you for dereliction of duty.”

“She doesn’t have an alibi, Mr. Add—”

“And you no longer have a crime. I’ve already put in a call to my insurance people to drop the Hogarth from their coverage. And I’m not pressing charges. If you do enjoy wasting time, I can certainly accommodate you by suing you and your department for harassment. I don’t even care if I win. What I care about is that you will spend your every waking hour defending yourself. All because you wouldn’t do your job today. Think about that.”