Sweet Revenge (35 page)

“Getting in was just a matter of having the right uniform
and forging the right identification. Once in, I had two hours before the guard made rounds. It took me a quarter of that just to crawl up the wall and over the ceiling.”

“If you don’t want to tell me how you did it, just say so.”

“I am telling you. You finished with that?” He took the bottle from her and drank. “Suction cups. Not quite the hardware store variety, but the same concept. It gives you insight into how a fly feels.”

“You stuck yourself to the ceiling?”

“More or less. They wouldn’t hold, of course, for the whole job. I rigged a trapeze into the ceiling with toggle bolts. I remember hanging by my knees over all those shiny rocks. I couldn’t even afford to sweat. I had a carbide bit drill packed in Styrofoam to muffle the noise. When I got through the glass, the real work started. I had stones in my pouch the exact weight of the various pieces in the collection. Piece by piece, I switched. You had to be fast and very sure. More than a fraction of a second without the right weight, and the alarm would go. It took almost an hour, with the blood rushing to my head and my lingers going numb. Then I swung out on the trapeze and landed outside the alarm field. I remember that it felt as though someone were shooting arrows into my legs when I landed. I could barely crawl. That was the worst part and one I’d failed to calculate.” He could laugh now, looking back. “I sat there in a heap, beating on my legs to get the circulation going again and visualizing myself caught, not because I wasn’t good enough, but because my bloody legs had gone to sleep.”

With her head pillowed on sea grass, Adrianne laughed with him. “What did you do?”

“I pictured myself in a cell, then made a very fast and very inelegant exit, mostly on my hands and knees. By the time the alarm was given, I was soaking in the tub at my hotel.”

When he brought himself back and glanced at her, she was smiling. “You miss it.”

“Only in rare moments.” He flipped his cigarette into the spray. “I’m a businessman first, Addy. It was time to get out of the business. Spencer, he’s my superior, had come too close too often.”

“They knew about you, yet they let you in.”

“Better a wolf in the fold than loose, I suppose. Sooner or later you get sloppy. It takes only one mistake.”

She looked back at the sea with its turbulent water. “I have only one more job, and I’ve no intention of being sloppy.”

He said nothing. With a little time, a little care, he was certain he could persuade her to let it go. If talk didn’t work, there were roadblocks he could construct. “What do you say to a siesta, then Christmas dinner?”

“All right.” She rose, carrying her sandals by the straps. “But I get to drive back.”

Perhaps it was foolish to fuss, but she couldn’t resist. It felt good to linger in a scented bath and dust on clouds of fragrant powder. These were peculiarly women’s habits, a seed of which had been sown in her in the harem. She enjoyed taking a long, leisurely time preparing, though her evening with Philip could hardly be called a date. She knew that a good part of the reason he was making himself so available as an escort was to watch her. She might have told him she had no other business on the island, but there was no reason he should believe her. In any case, being with him served her purpose. Or so she told herself as she chose a thin white dress with yards of skirt and no back. She would be as free with her time with him as he was with her. In that way, he wouldn’t be on guard when she slipped out of the country … tomorrow.

There were plans to be finalized, plans she’d begun to make a decade ago. Soon after the new year she would go back to Jaquir. She clipped stones on her ears that were as cold as her thoughts and as false as the image she would present to her father.

But for tonight she would enjoy the lingering light of a tropical sunset and the whisper of calm seas.

When Philip knocked on her door she was ready. He, too, wore white, with his shirt a splash of blue against his jacket.

“There’s something to be said for spending winters in hot climates.” He ran his hands down her bare shoulders. “Did you rest?”

“Yes.” She didn’t tell him she’d made a quick trip to the
El Grande to pack her things there and check out. At his touch she felt the frustrated confusion of a horse who’s spurred and curbed at the same time. “And like a tourist, my thoughts rarely go beyond the next meal.”

“Good. Before we go I have something for you.” He drew a small velvet box from his pocket. This time she did step back as though she’d been pinched.

“No.” Her voice was cooler than she wanted it to be, but he took her hand and placed the box in it.

“It’s not only rude to refuse a Christmas gift, it’s bad luck.” He didn’t add that he’d had to pave his way with bribes and tips until he’d found a jeweler who would open his shop on the holiday.

“It wasn’t necessary.”

“Should it have been?” he countered. “Come now, Adrianne, a woman like you should know how to accept a present graciously.”

He was right, of course, and she was being a fool. She flipped open the box and studied the pin resting on white satin. Not resting, she thought, stalking, like the panther it was, richly black, sharply carved with its ruby eyes on fire.

“It’s beautiful.”

“It made me think of you. Something we have in common.” He pinned it on her dress with the ease of a man accustomed to doing such things.

She needed to take it lightly, and smiled. “From one cat burglar to another?” But her fingers strayed up to stroke it.

“From one restless soul to another,” he corrected her, and slipping the box back into his pocket, took her hand.

They dined on delicately grilled lobster and sharp, fruity wine while mariachis strolled singing songs of love and longing. From their table by the window they could watch people walk along the seawall and small boys, always eager for a coin, loiter by the row of cabs waiting to open a door.

While they ate, the sun went down in a blaze of color, and the moon, less rushed, rose majestically.

She asked him about his childhood and was surprised when he didn’t evade or pass it off with a joke.

“My mother sold tickets at the cinema. That came as a plus for me, as I could always go in and watch whatever was showing, sometimes for a whole afternoon. Other than that, it
didn’t go much further than paying the rent on a miserable two-room flat in Chelsea. My father had breezed into her life long enough to make me, then breezed out again when he learned I was on the way.”

She felt a pang, and would have reached for his hand, but he lifted his wine. The moment passed. “It must have been difficult for her. Being alone.”

“I’m sure it was hell, but you’d never know it. She’s a born optimist, the kind of woman who can be content with whatever she has no matter how little or how much. She’s a great fan of your mother’s, by the way. When she found out I’d taken Phoebe Spring’s daughter to dinner, she lectured me for an hour for not bringing you to see her.”

“Mama had a way of endearing herself to people.”

“Didn’t you ever think of following in her footsteps as an actress?”

It was easy to smile as she lifted her glass. “Didn’t I?”

“How much is an act, I wonder.”

“An act?” She gestured with her hands. “Whatever’s necessary. Does your mother know about your—vocation?”

“You mean sex?”

He hadn’t been sure she would laugh, but she did, then leaned forward so that the candlelight caught in her eyes. “Not avocation, Philip, vocation.”

“Ah. Well, it’s nothing we discuss. Suffice it to say that Mum’s no fool. More wine?”

“Just a little. Philip, do you ever think about going back, about one last, incredible job? Something that would keep you warm in your old age.”

“The Sun and the Moon?”

“That’s mine,” she said rather primly.

“The Sun and the Moon,” he repeated, amused as he watched her. “Two fascinating jewels in one necklace. The Sun, a two-hundred-eighty-carat diamond of the first water, absolutely pure, brilliantly white, and according to legend a stone with a checkered past. It was found in the Deccan region of India in the sixteenth century, the rough cut being over eight hundred carats. The stone was found by two brothers, and like Cain and Abel, one murdered the other to have it. Rather than being banished to the Land of Nod, the surviving brother found misery in his homeland. His wife and
children drowned, leaving him with the rather cold comfort of the stone.”

Philip sipped, and when Adrianne made no comment, topped off his wine, then hers. “Legend has it he went mad, and offered the stone to the devil. Whether he was taken up on it or not, he was murdered and the stone began its travels. Istanbul, Siam, Crete, and dozens of other exotic places, always leaving a trail of betrayal and murder in its wake. Until, having satisfied the gods, it found a home in Jaquir around 1876.”

“My great-great-grandfather bought it for his favorite wife.” She ran a finger around and around the rim of her wineglass. “For the equivalent of one and a half million American dollars. It would have cost him more, but the stone had developed a nasty reputation.” Her finger stilled. “There were people starving in Jaquir at that time.”

“He wouldn’t be the first ruler to ignore such things, or the last.” He waited, watching her as the waiter cleared their plates. “It was cut by a Venetian, who either from nerves or lack of skill lost more of the rough stone than he should have. His hands were severed and hung around his neck before he was left in the desert. But the stone survived to be paired with a pearl, just as ancient, that had been plucked out of the Persian Gulf, perfectly spherical, with an orient that defies description. Lustrous, glowing, like two hundred fifty carats of moonlight. While the diamond flashes, the pearl glows, and legend has it the pearl’s magic fights against the diamond’s. Together they’re like peace and war, snow and fire.” He lifted his glass. “Or sun and moon.”

Adrianne took a sip of wine to ease her throat. Talk of the necklace excited as much as it upset. She knew just how it had looked, draped around her mother’s neck, and she could imagine, only imagine the way it would feel in her hands. Magic or not, legend or not, she would take it.

“You’ve done your homework.”

“I know about The Sun and the Moon the same way I know about the Kohinoor or the Pitt, as stones I may admire, even lust after, but not as stones to risk my life for.”

“When the motive is only money or acquisition, even diamonds can be resisted.” She started to rise, but he caught
her hand. His grip was firmer than it should have been, and his eyes were no longer amused.

“When the motive is revenge, it should be resisted.” Her hand flexed once in his, then lay passive. Control, he thought, could be both blessing and curse. “Revenge clouds the mind so that you can’t think coolly. Passions of any kind lead to mistakes.”

“I have only one passion.” The candlelight flickered over her face, deepening the hollows of her cheeks. “I’ve had twenty years to cultivate it, channel it. Not all passions are hot and dangerous, Philip. Some are ice cold.”

When she rose he said nothing, but promised himself he would prove her wrong before the evening was over.

He was a difficult man to measure, Adrianne thought. He could be intense one moment and frivolous the next. As they drove to the hotel, he spoke lightly, amusingly, of mutual acquaintances. That moment might not have passed in the restaurant when he’d taken her hand, looking into her eyes as if he could bend her to his will by the look alone. Now it was all tropical breezes and moonlight. Talk of the necklace and the blood that had been spilled for it were blown away.

It was easy to see how he had slipped into the circle of the rich and the pampered. You didn’t see a fatherless street thief from Chelsea when you looked at him. Nor did you see a calculating, sure-footed cat burglar. Instead, you saw the cultured, the faintly bored, and the charmingly aimless. While he was none of those things.

Even knowing it, she relaxed. Part of his power was the way he had of making a woman tremble one moment and laugh and put tip her feet the next. She found herself regretting when the car was parked and the evening had whittled down to the walk to her door.

“I was annoyed to find you here,” she told him as she dipped into her bag for her key.

“You were furious to find me here.” Taking the key from her, he slid it into the lock himself.

“All right.” She was amused and relaxed. Both showed in her smile. “I don’t often change my mind, but it’s been nice having your company today.”

“I’m glad to hear that, as I intend to stay with you.” As
he spoke, he cupped her elbow and moved through the door with her.

“If you think I might nip back to take the St. Johns’ jewels, you needn’t worry.”

He tossed the key on her dresser, then took her evening bag and sent it in the same direction. “My being here at the moment has nothing to do with jewels.” Before she could step back, he laid his hands on her shoulders, then ran them with terrifying gentleness down her arms. Quite naturally, his fingers linked with hers.

“No.”

He lifted one hand, kissed it, then lifted the other. “No what?”

Like a rocket the heat tore down her fingertips. It was one thing to ignore what you’d never needed, and another to resist what you suddenly did. “I want you to go.”

Keeping one of her hands caught in his, he brushed her hair back from her shoulder, his fingertips just skimming her bare flesh. He felt the jolt of reaction, but wasn’t certain if it was hers or his. “I would, if I believed you. Do you know they call you unattainable?”

She knew it very well. “Is that why you want me? Because I’m unattainable?”

“It might have been enough.” He toyed with her hair. “Once.”

“I’m not interested, Philip. I thought I’d made that clear.”

“Your talent for lying is one of the things I most admire about you.”

He was closer, already closer than he should have been. “I’m not sure what else I can do to convince you you’re wasting your time.”