Twice the Temptation (48 page)

 
Weight slammed into the back of her shoulders, driving her to the floor. “Of course I blame you, Sam,” Bryce breathed into her ear, his arm snaking around her throat. “You’re what brought me here in the first place.”

 
Panic flew through her, and she pushed back hard against it. Panic later; think now. “Jeez,” she muttered, trying not to wheeze with his body pinning her to the wet floor, “put on some weight there, haven’t you, Shepherd?”

 
“It’s all muscle, me girl.” He shifted. “Now come up with me slow, or I’ll have to get rough. And I’d hate to bloody a face as pretty as yours.”

 
Dammit. She’d let herself get distracted. Putting out her hands for balance, she let Bryce help her to her feet. He wasn’t Henry Larson, and he wouldn’t get suckered by a stumble and kick.

 
Once they were both standing, he released her and
took a step backward. “You do look very fine,” he murmured, his gaze lingering on the wet front of her dress. “Like when you’d con your way into a house party to scope out where the new Rembrandt was hanging. There’s nothing like seeing you on the job, love.”

 
“We worked together on a job once, Bryce,” she retorted. “Don’t pretend we had some Butch-and-Sundance thing going.”

 
“I think we were more like Bonnie and Clyde—off the clock, at any rate.” He smiled his lopsided smile, even more charming with water showering down on him.

 
“What are you stalling around for?” she asked abruptly, her adrenaline ratcheting up another notch. The cops were on the way, for God’s sake.

 
Since she couldn’t imagine Bryce ever calling it quits voluntarily, he had some kind of plan. A plan that seemed to include keeping her there in the hall with him and waiting for the cops to show.

 
“I’m giving you another chance to come with me,” he returned, brushing a straggle of wet hair out of her face. “There are a couple million pounds’ worth of gemstones leaving this place with me. Having you on my side would make things a wee bit easier, Sammi.”

 
“Get a clue, will you?” she retorted. “I am not going anywhere with you. Except out that door right now, with you keeping your hands out of your pockets.”

 
“Are you sure?”

 
“Yes, I’m sure. Stop fucking around before the cops show up and kill you, Bryce.”

 
His grin deepened. “Well, you can’t blame a bloke for trying.”

 
Without warning he shoved her backward. She stumbled on the slippery slate floor. As she grabbed a display to right herself, he stood on the next one over and
jumped up, grabbing the lowest of the sprinkler pipes and hauling himself onto the beam to which it was attached.

 
There above the spray from the sprinklers, she spotted the bundle draped over the beam. A police jacket. Of course. Once the cops showed up, he would change out of his wet shirt, climb out through the roof, and just…blend in with the white hats. With her gems in his unobtrusive blue shoulder bag.

 
“Oh, no, you don’t,” she muttered, running to the wall and planting her foot on the main sprinkler pipe, then scrambling up it to the nearest beam. The dress didn’t make things any easier, but she wasn’t going to take it off.

 
“Samantha, if you’re not coming with me, then get down,” Bryce warned her, snatching up the bundled jacket and straddling the beam.

 
“After you.” Climbing on top of the old wood, she ran along it in her bare feet to the next one and hiked herself up to just below where he sat. He was bigger and bulkier than she was, but she was faster and more agile. A pretty level playing field, really.

 
He yanked off his wet black T-shirt and pulled on the police jacket. He even had the local patch on the shoulder. His pants were already a pretty close match, especially in the dark. Damn, it was a pretty good plan—and risky, the way she liked them, too.

 
She hopped from one beam to the next, her skirt flying around her. “Ah, girl, you make me wish I was down on the floor looking up at you,” Bryce commented, fastening the last button and standing on the beam again. “Too bad I have somewhere else to be right now.”

 
“You’re going to have to miss that appointment,” she muttered, reaching out and just brushing the cuff of his
pants. Wrapping her fingers into it, she pulled. Hard.

 
“Shit!” he yelped, as he lost his balance. Scrambling, he went down, grabbing on to the beam with his fingers as he tumbled past it.

 
Now they were eye-to-eye. The anger in his gaze could have melted theTitanic iceberg. “I said you’re not going anywhere with those gems,” she stated.

 
He swung his legs forward, catching her in the thigh as she stood there. For a sickening moment she felt herself overbalance. She bent her knees, gripping the top of the beam with her short fingernails, trying to reverse her momentum. Then she pushed off forward.

 
Reaching out and catching Bryce around the knees, she hung there for a heartbeat before he lost his grip and they both fell. When they hit the floor, her grip on him broke. Samantha rolled to her feet, shoving her skirt back down past her thighs.

 
“You little bitch!” Bryce bellowed, grabbing her by the front of the dress and shoving again.

 
The wet silk threads split, and the bosom of her pretty red dress ripped away in his hands—along with the velvet bag stuffed between her breasts. “Give that back,” she panted, feeling her neck to make sure that at least the diamonds Rick had given her were still there.

 
He shouldered her away again. “What’s this?” he asked, dropping the scrap of dress and dumping the contents of the bag into his palm. “Good glory, Sammi, love. You’ve been doing a bit of midnight shopping on your own, haven’t you, now?”

 
“No. It’s a family heirloom. Give it to me.” She lunged at him, knowing she was handling the situation wrong, but he dodged sideways and twisted away from her.

 
“Sam, this bauble must be worth a bloody fortune. You sly little cat. You’ve been holding out on me.”

 
Fucking great.Okay, he wouldn’t understand philanthropy or loyalty to Rick, and the more she wanted it back, the more he would want to keep it. “Do you know how long it took me to get that?” she snapped, trying to turn it into her part of the take for this job. Her feet slipped on the wet, debris-strewn floor, and she stumbled a little. “I am not sharing.”

 
“Then neither am I.” Bryce sent a roundhouse kick at her. She sidestepped it, then slipped onto her backside when he shoved a display over in her direction.

 
By the time she got to her feet and out from under everything, he was halfway up to the roof. Still cursing, she climbed after him. Down below, the speakers clicked on again. “This is the police. The building is surrounded. Release Miss Jellicoe and come out with your hands away from your sides.”

 
So now she was a hostage. As she reached the top beam, Bryce slipped out onto the roof through a small hole he’d obviously cut there. Teetering, the ceiling too low for her to stand upright, she hitched herself along the support, reached up, and scrambled out the hole onto the roof after him. This was war, and she was not letting him get away with the Nightshade Diamond. Not for anything.

 
“Mr. Addison, let us do our job,” Lieutenant Thanefield barked, tapping the microphone button on his shoulder to remind his men to be alert.

 
If they needed to be reminded, they were in the wrong profession. Richard had immediately assessed Thanefield as a fairly competent officer looking to impress the rich man on the block, as it were, and he hadn’t seen anything that would cause him to change his opinion.

 
He ground his fist into his thigh. Not a peep from
Samantha since she’d gone into the exhibit hall. Whatever conversation she might be having with Bryce Shepherd, he didn’t like it. However angry it made her, whatever she threatened, he should never have let her go in. If anything happened to her—

 
Another figure limped into sight beneath the bright surveillance lights.Larson.

 
“Who’s in charge here?” the inspector demanded. The left shoulder of his tuxedo was torn and bloodied, but the limp favored his groin. Samantha had said that she’d kicked him, and she didn’t play nice when she was angry.

 
“I am,” Thanefield returned. “Lieutenant Michael Thanefield. Who are you?”

 
Larson fumbled into his pocket and pulled out his badge. “Inspector Henry Larson, Scotland Yard.”

 
Richard touched the outside of his pocket, where Larson’s pistol lay hidden. If he pulled it now, they would probably both end up full of holes. Even so, it was tempting. Bloody tempting. “Lieutenant, I have reason to believe that Inspector Larson is an accomplice in this robbery,” he said aloud.

 
“What grounds do you have for making that kind of accusation, Mr. Addison?” Thanefield asked.

 
Richard knew perfectly well that if it had been anybody but him making that statement, he probably would have been arrested, himself. People didn’t go around disparaging officers of the Yard. “He attempted to shoot Miss Jell—”

 
“I’ll tell you on what grounds,” Larson interrupted. “Sam Jellicoe is behind the theft. She tried to kill me earlier.” He clutched his arm. “I imagine I’m only here because she left me for dead.”

 
Richard snorted, attempting to bury his considerable
anger behind cynicism. “She kicked you because you tried to shoot her, Larson. And you should be glad you have an accomplice because if I hadn’t had to track him down, I would have gone after you. And I would have made certain you were dead.”

 
“Mr. Addison!”

 
“This is ridiculous,” Larson shot back, patting at his jacket. “I’m not even armed.”

 
“You—”

 
With a quick flicker, half the security lights went out. He’d been around Samantha long enough to know that someone had blown a charge on the wiring. And he abruptly realized why Samantha had insisted on putting half the lights on a different system.

 
“I’ll sort this out later,” Lieutenant Thanefield said, and tapped his radio again. “Enough of this. Gordy, move your team in.”

 
“Roger that.”

 
God.Armed men bursting into an enclosed space with Samantha inside. Every ounce of his overprotective soul wanted to do something to prevent that—but for once he didn’t know what hecould do without making the situation worse. If she got stubborn about it, did her usual refusal-to-cooperate dance that she frequently pulled on him, she could end up dead. If Shepherd hadn’t killed her already. That, though, was why he still held on to the gun.

 
As he watched the first unit move up to the door, he tried to think like Sam, put himself in the head of a first-class cat burglar trapped in a building with police everywhere. Since the lights had just gone out, he was still inside, or at leastvery close by. The dark would have a purpose—to help him get away.

 
Richard tore his eyes from the exhibit building for a
moment to look around it. With what looked like half a hundred police officers and security guards in the meadow, Shepherd might even already be out of the building, figuring he could escape in the confusion and the half dark. Samantha had several times mentioned the roof, and even that Shepherd had probably been hiding out on it the other night while they tracked down his cat toy.

 
He looked up—in time to see a faint figure in a red dress drop ten feet to the ground, roll, and come back to her feet.Christ.