Too Wicked to Keep (4 page)

“I should have kept the champagne,” she said with a slightly maniacal laugh. “It was already open.”

“Let me.” He reached out to touch her shoulder, but pulled back. She didn't want him to touch her—she'd made that clear. And right now, he didn't think she needed one more reason to hate him.

She didn't turn around, but clutched the countertop in front of her.

“I loved Marshall.”

“I know.”

From their first contact, their first kiss, their first hot, frantic sexual encounter in a darkened corner of the museum after hours, Danny had known that Abby had only gravitated to him because of excitement and exploration and lust. He was a man unlike any she'd ever encountered—one who had been tailored to her needs, her wants, her desires. In giving her what she so secretly craved, he'd taken what he'd come for and then counted on her loyalty to the man she really loved in order to cover up his own crime.

What Danny hadn't factored into the equation was that once he delivered the painting to his buyer, he hadn't been able to follow his usual routine, which was to disappear until the heat from the crime wore off. Instead, he'd walked right back into the fire, determined to steal Abby, too.

But not to fence her for someone else to enjoy—she was a treasure he'd wanted for himself.

One he could never have.

He wished he could define what it was about her that was so enthralling. Despite her sexier packaging, he still sensed her reined-in wildness, her continued struggle
between doing what was expected of her and acting on her raging need to be free.

In a lot of ways, she lived a double life the same as he did.

Once upon a time, Abby had been as simple to figure out as a game of Three Card Monty. Now, she was more like Omaha Hi/Lo Hold'Em Poker—complex and challenging, with variations the average player wouldn't understand.

Luckily, Danny was well above average.

“I'm sorry for what I did to you, Abby. I'm sorry that I took something you valued so much. I have no good excuse, I just have the truth. I'm a thief. Stealing is what I do. It's what you're counting on me to do when we get to Chicago.”

At this, she spun around. Her eyes were dry, but streaked with red. “And you agreed with hardly a second thought.”

He clasped his hands behind his back to keep from grabbing her by the shoulders and kissing her. The action was all levels of wrong, but the need to backtrack out of this conversation was powerful.

“Of course I agreed. Stealing is what I do. Besides, I only steal from people who can afford it,” he explained with a wink. “And my expertise is in stealing
things.
The value we put on tangible items in our society is the real crime.”

She snorted, then pushed past him, abandoning the wine. “Philosophy? Not your forte.”

“Clearly,” he said wryly.

She marched down the aisle and threw herself back into her seat. Danny took a quick look through a drawer, found a corkscrew, grabbed the wine bottle and joined her. As he had not thought to pack a parachute, he had
nowhere to run and a lot of air space to endure before they reached Chicago. The whole experience would be a hell of a lot better after a few glasses of Pinot Noir.

He settled in across from her and popped the cork.

She didn't speak until he offered her a glass, which she accepted, though she didn't take a sip. “You stole more than a thing from me, Daniel.”

Her voice was barely audible, yet sharp as a knife.

“I know.”

“I want it back,” she said.

“I told you. I'll do whatever it takes to get the painting for you.”

She stared at him with such intense focus, he nearly looked away. “That's not what I meant. I want what you took from my heart. Think you can find that, too?”

T
HE MINUTE THEY LANDED
, Abby wrapped herself up in the minutiae of getting them from the airport to her apartment without more than minimal conversation. Though she'd tried to dig a little deeper into what had transpired five years ago between her and Daniel, he'd skillfully spun the topics away from anything personal. For the duration of their two-hour flight, they'd exchanged little more than small talk.

But that, in itself, was revealing.

Time had not made him cavalier about what had happened between them. He had regrets, which was only fair, since she had them, too.

Outside the casino, Daniel's touch had blown apart the emotional containment built by Marshall's unconditional forgiveness. Questions she'd set aside in order to concentrate on her marriage now exploded in her brain. What vulnerabilities had Daniel noticed about her first? How had he breached her understanding of right and wrong so easily? Why had
he
learned about her secret fantasies when she'd never confessed them to anyone else?

Had he ever really loved her?

For so long, she hadn't cared about what Daniel felt. She'd concentrated only on Marshall's love, which she'd cherished. But now she needed answers. Moving on would require them, and more than anything, she wanted to put her past to rest so she could live again—and hopefully, someday, love again. And since the collector who had her painting would show the work to the public in a little over a week, she only had until then to close this chapter of her life for good.

But instead of deconstructing the foundation of their affair, she and Daniel had spent the rest of the flight sipping wine and talking about his newly discovered brothers.

Or rather, his newly acknowledged brothers. He'd actually known about them both long before either Alejandro, the Spanish auction-house owner, and Michael, the FBI agent, learned about him—a fact that pretty much summed up the man she was counting on to save her family from humiliation. To keep the upper hand, Daniel made it his business to know everything he could about any nemesis, even when his “nemesis” was a blood relative…or a woman he'd once claimed to love.

Luckily, she had honed her own information-gathering skills since they'd last met. From her private investigators, she'd learned about his arrest and subsequent release from jail. But from Daniel, she'd found out that he no longer thought Alejandro was a stuck-up prick, and that he'd gone to New Orleans to steal the ring he was now wearing, but instead had helped Michael rescue two women from a psychotic rapist.

“So are you going to tell your brothers where you are?” she asked, hunting in her clutch bag for the keys as her driver pulled up to the covered awning in front of her apartment. Though she'd downsized from the brown
stone Marshall's parents had leased to them during her marriage, she was eternally grateful that she'd picked a place with more than one bedroom. Inviting Daniel into Marshall's house would not have been right. Putting Daniel up in a hotel would make planning his theft too difficult. She needed to keep him close—but not too close.

“No,” he replied, folding his arms against the blast of Chicago cold.

She hurried to the front entrance so they could get out of the frigid wind. “Don't you think you should?”

“Why?”

Abby keyed in the code to her building, then waited while Daniel swung open the door. At nearly three in the morning, the doorman had left his post and the chilled October air sliced through her skin. She rubbed the gooseflesh from her arms while they hurried across the marble lobby to the elevators.

“I don't know,” she said. “I don't have siblings.”

“What about that friend of yours?”

She stopped up short. “You remember Erica? You never met her.”

“No, but you talked about her all the time. As I recall, she's like a sister and I bet you don't check in with her every time you go somewhere.”

“Yes, I do.”

“Did she know you were going to New Orleans?”

“Yes,” she replied haughtily.

“Did she know
why?
”

She frowned and punched the arrow pointing up. “Not exactly.”

He smirked, and then held back the doors after they slid open.

“Why the secrecy?”

Abby scowled. She'd meant for tonight to be about her eking out painful answers from Daniel—not the other way around.

“I never told her about you.”

She hurried inside, slid her resident key in the slot and programmed the elevator to go to the twenty-first floor. It was late and she was tired. Her mouth felt dry and cottony, a result of two glasses of wine, a high altitude and a lot of talking. She didn't want to confess to him how she'd hidden her worst mistake from her best friend, even after all these years. They had more important things to discuss—things that weren't so much about her.

As the elevator shot upward, she grappled with the fact that after researching her thoroughly before he'd gone after the painting, Daniel had obviously not picked up a single newspaper or searched her name through Google since he'd left. He'd had no idea that Marshall had died. He'd had no clue that she'd taken a job as a curator for several private art collections and spent the rest of her time leading tours of Chicago's great museums for kids from working-class and struggling neighborhoods who might not otherwise have a chance to experience the city's many artistic and architectural treasures. She led a simple, unexciting life, but one with purpose and meaning.

At least, that's what he'd said when she told him.

And she wasn't exactly sure how she felt about his reaction. In a way, she was disappointed that he hadn't been more…disappointed.

They arrived on her floor and she quietly padded down the carpeted hallway and unlocked her door. The minute she stepped inside, she felt the warm softness of fur curling around her ankles. Lady, her short-haired,
dark tortoiseshell cat, had immediately come to greet her while Black Jack, her long-haired male, stared at her from atop her antique china cabinet with his assessing amber eyes.

“Jack! Get down from there.”

The cat, predictably, ignored her.

She tossed her purse aside and scooped Lady into her arms. The loud purring made her smile. When she turned, Daniel stood rooted in the doorway, eyeing her as if she were some sort of alien.

She glanced down at her pet. “Are you allergic?”

“To cats specifically? No. To pets in general? Yeah.”

“But you're a cat burglar,” she said, snuggling Lady's furry head beneath her chin. “I assumed you'd love my sweet babies.”

“Nobody says
cat burglar
anymore.”

“I just did,” she corrected him.

The cat's soft vibrations of contentedness soothed Abby's frazzled nerves. She was glad to be home, even if she'd had to bring Daniel with her—even if her life could fall apart in a thousand different ways if her crazy plan to save her family from humiliation failed.

She slipped into the kitchen and checked the food and water bowls, which were full. She grabbed a pouch of cat treats out of the pantry and endured Lady's impatient mewls on her way back into the living area, where she intended to coax Black Jack down from his perch. She was a little surprised to see Daniel still standing in the hallway warily eyeing her and her cat.

She smirked as she approached him, Lady cradled in her arms. “I can bring you a pillow and blankets if you prefer to sleep in the hall.”

With a grimace, he entered the apartment and shut the door behind him. Lady instantly struggled out of
her arms, bounced to the ground and made a beeline for the new guy. Her internal motor turned up to its highest setting, Lady coiled around his legs, basting his pants with her soft, dark fur. He sidestepped with an amazing amount of grace, but he'd met his match. The cat anticipated his moves, and no matter how much dancing he did in the foyer, Lady wouldn't let him get away.

“What is she, in heat or something?”

“You do have that effect on women,” Abby quipped, shaking the bag of treats up at Black Jack, who seemed much more interested in his companion's obsession with the new guy than he did in the tuna-flavored crunchies.

“It's a curse,” Daniel said, balancing on one foot to avoid stepping on Lady's serpentine tale. “Know how to break it?”

She snorted. If she knew how to fight the allure that was Daniel Burnett, she wouldn't be in this situation at all, would she?

“Just pet her,” she advised. “If cats think you don't like them, they never leave you alone.”

“So if you like them, they ignore you?”

“Pretty much.” She slid a footstool to the cabinet and climbed up to collect Black Jack, but he had no interest in coming down. He lifted his big furry body and backed into a corner with a hiss.

“Oh, really?” she challenged, annoyed. Her pets weren't accustomed to guests of the male persuasion, but she didn't expect open hostility. “No treats for you, you nasty traitor.”

“Talking to me or the cat?”

Daniel was directly behind her. She gasped, surprised he'd come so near without her hearing him—without her feeling him. He had Lady curled up in his arms, her eyes
at half-mast while he scratched her chin. Abby couldn't remember her cat ever looking quite so hypnotized.

She remembered the sensation very well.

“Give me a second and I'll get you set up in the guest room,” she said, turning so she could back her way down the stool—but not before he took a bold look at her ass, which was right at his eye level.

“Is that my only option?”

His voice was silk and sensuality, not unlike the sound emanating from the back of her cat's throat. She allowed herself a split second to fantasize about him caressing her as he did her pet, but then skewered him with an exasperated look that was more for herself than for him.

Daniel exuded sex to strangers. To a woman who'd experienced the skill of his sly hands, wicked tongue and generous mouth, his allure was doubly powerful.

With their shared past, her attraction to him wasn't rational. It was chemical.

“Unless you want to sleep out here on the couch with the cats, yes, Daniel, that's your only option.”

“If we skip the sleeping part, do my choices expand?”

His shamelessness was both infuriating and exhilarating. He had no boundaries, no limits. She couldn't help but laugh. She'd never met anyone like him and she doubted that once he left, she'd ever meet anyone like him again.

At least, not if she could help it.

“Sorry, but that's the best I can offer.”

He eyed her couch and then the cat, who was now stretching up and burrowing her head beneath his chin. “The guest room will be fine.”

“Good choice. Make yourself at home and I'll show you around in a few minutes.”

Abby went into her bedroom, kicked off her high heels, then unhooked her earrings as she sauntered into her bathroom to take off her makeup and brush her teeth. Thinking it might not be a good idea to show Daniel into the bedroom while she was still wearing the sexy black dress, she pulled out her most modest pajamas, a full-length top and pants in a hazy pearl silk that she'd gotten from her mother for her last birthday.

She kept the lights off, her ear tuned for any sound of Daniel moving around her apartment, maybe looking through her things, trying to find some clue about her current life that he could use to his advantage.

He could look all he wanted—he wouldn't find much. When she'd moved out of the brownstone she'd shared with Marshall, she'd left most of her possessions behind. The house had belonged to his family and most of the furnishings had been theirs, too. Shamed by her behavior before the wedding, she'd wrapped herself up in his world, in his things. When he died, she realized how much of herself she'd lost.

Once she'd started to come out of the fog of sadness, she'd decided to get her own place. She'd ignored her mother's offer to pay for an interior designer, opting instead to fill the apartment herself with furniture and knickknacks that she'd picked out on her own. Even the cats were new, adopted from a shelter. She still had a few things to remind her of Marshall—like the T-shirt he used to wear to bed that she kept in a tissue-lined box in her closet—but mostly, this places was hers and hers alone.

But now, Daniel was here. In her life. In her home. Was he still in her heart, too?

She reached behind to undo the zipper of her dress
and nearly jumped out of her skin when her hand met his.

“Here, let me.”

She moved to step away, but stopped. She couldn't keep running. She'd found Daniel not only so he could help her retrieve her grandmother's painting, but also so she could face his part in her crazy past and put it to rest. If she couldn't endure his touch, how would she ever prove to herself that he no longer held sway over her heart, body or soul?

After taking a deep breath, she lifted her hair off her nape.

For a long minute, he didn't move, but his warmth prickled her exposed skin.

She glanced over her shoulder.

“Everything okay back there?” she asked, trying not to sound as if her nerve endings were about to burn out at the tips.

The heat of his hand hovered inches from her flesh. “I didn't expect you to let me get this close.”

She held her hair higher. “I'm too tired to twist myself into a pretzel so I can put on my pajamas. I'm just being practical.”

He hummed as he mulled over her claim. “I can work with that.”

“Why don't you just work my zipper while you tell me why you think it's okay to be in my bedroom?”

He slid the fastener down her body, but didn't reply. The pad of his finger only struck against her skin once, at the spot where her lower back arched.

Then he was gone.

At least, his hand was gone. He hadn't moved.