Too Wicked to Keep

For revenge, the stupid gold-and-emerald heirloom was now nearly cutting off the circulation in his right hand. And as the pièce de résistance, the one woman who’d broken his heart had, for some unknown reason, now traveled cross-country to rub his nose in her long and happy marriage.

This was karma. It had to be.

“So, what are you doing here, so far from the man who stole you away from me?”

She laughed, but there was no trace of humor in those brandy-colored irises.

“Is that how you remember things? Because as I recall, you were the one who did all the stealing.”

Five years of time and distance, plus wearing, even under duress, his infamous ancestor’s ring, gave him the balls to snag her by the waist and pull her in close.

Five years of marriage gave her the confidence to remain still, a curious grin playing on her lips while she waited to see what he’d do next.

Those five years did not, however, protect him from the instantaneous slam of need that exploded through his system from the scent of her perfume and the silky warmth of her skin.

“You stole my heart,” he murmured.

She twisted away from him, but she probably hadn’t even heard him over the music and clanging sounds of the casino. “You lost the right to touch me a long time ago.”

He leaned back into his chair. Maybe if he exuded his typical casual air, the heartbeat ramming against his chest wouldn’t be so obvious.

She hadn’t meant to lose her cool. Danny could see the combination of anger and shock in her eyes. But her intense reaction proved one thing—she hadn’t gotten over him. Maybe she still hated him. Maybe she spent every day cursing his name. But at least she hadn’t forgotten him. That was something.

“You’re right.” He took another drink, grateful for the smooth burn of the scotch as it slid down his throat. “But you know exactly who I am, Abby. If you wanted to rub my face in how hot you look after five years of marriage, then you’ve accomplished your goal. If you want to slap my face or have me arrested, then go ahead.” He leaned forward, his newly acquired ring glittering on his hand. “But don’t parade that luscious body of yours so close to mine and expect me to keep my hands off. Every man has his limits. Even me.”

“I’m counting on you to push past those limits, then,” she said stiffly.

For the first time, he caught a glimpse of the haughty, privileged princess he’d met five years ago. But only a glimpse.

“What are you talking about?”

“I came here to find you.”

“And your husband let you? What is he, a moron?”

“Don’t speak that way about Marshall,” she shot back. “He was a good man who didn’t deserve what I did to him.”

Was?

Danny stood. “No, he didn’t deserve any pain we caused him.”

She pressed her mouth into a tight line—a line Danny couldn’t help but want to breach. On a normal day, at a normal hour, Abigail was a classic Mediterranean beauty, with her thick, dark hair, smooth olive skin and expressive amber eyes. But when she was angry—when she let her control slip even a little—she knocked the breath from his lungs.

“Very true,” she conceded. “But I didn’t expect to hear compassion from Daniel Burnett, or is it David Brandon again?”

“I haven’t been David Brandon for—” He cut his claim short. He’d actually used the name the day before. He’d developed a habit of trying it every so often, to see if the pain of losing Abby had lessened any in the years since she’d kicked him out of her life.

It hadn’t.

“Why’d you come looking for me?”

His voice was as strangled as the skin beneath his ring finger. Her mouth curved into a tiny smile—the first one that flashed all the way up to her irises. His pain gave her pleasure. He couldn’t blame her.

She sidled closer, then danced the tips of her fingers up his shirt, from his waistband to his collar. “I have a job for you.”

With a flick of her nail up the underside of his chin, a fire sparked through Danny’s body that made him want to drown himself in the moisture of her mouth. She was taunting him. Making him pay, one hormone at a time, for nearly destroying her future.

He not only didn’t blame her—he wanted more.

His brain might have registered all the reasons why he should stay half a country away from Abigail Albertini Chamberlain, but his dick hadn’t gotten the memo. Blood rushed down so fast, Danny had to grab the edge of the bar to keep from losing his balance.

“No way.”

“You owe me,” she said.

“So? You’re playing with fire, Abby. I can’t promise you won’t get burned again. And this time, Marshall won’t forgive you. I wouldn’t.”

“You wouldn’t have the first time.”

She took her time tracing her fingers up his neck and then tousling the strands of hair at his temples. When her gaze locked with his, he saw none of the naive, uncertain girl she used to be.

She was all woman now—and she had something up her sleeve, figuratively speaking. Something that wasn’t going to be good—at least, not for him.

“No,” he conceded. “I wouldn’t have forgiven you.”

“Good,” she said, pushing away from him and snatching the flute of champagne the bartender had delivered. “Then you haven’t changed. I’m counting on you being the same lowlife, conscienceless thief you used to be.”

He forced a chuckle. “Why would you hope for that?”

She sipped her champagne. After enjoying half the glass, replete with appreciative hums and slides of her tongue over her rich, luscious lips, she put the flute back onto the bar and stretched up onto her tiptoes to whisper in his ear.

When she did, her breasts brushed against his chest. The sensation caused a domino effect of ignitions that sparked his every nerve ending.

“Because I’ve found my painting and I need you to make good on your promise and steal it back.”

3

ABBY SPUN ON HER four-inch heels, grabbed the bottle of champagne out of the ice bucket and started her hip-swinging parade out of the hotel bar. She measured her steps and the rhythm of her walk. She needed him to follow. She needed him to prove he wasn’t so much of a scoundrel that he’d break the last promise he made to her before he’d disappeared.

She supposed she could have offered him money. She had plenty of it, not that it had helped her thus far in averting a scandal for her family. She’d thought about offering her forgiveness, but she wasn’t sure he cared about it or that she had any to give. Time, distance and four years of marriage to a man who loved her had lessened the sting. She was still pissed off at Danny for nearly wrecking her life, but she no longer wanted to curl into a whimpering ball of loss and regret.

But he probably didn’t need her money, and if he cared one bit about forgiveness, he would have made good on his vow to retrieve the painting years ago. If she wanted him to follow now, she was going to offer him something she hoped he still craved—a chance to win her back.

It wasn’t going to happen, of course. She might have put on her sexiest dress and flown across the country to lure him back to Chicago, but she wasn’t going to sleep with him. She’d been there, done that and had the heartache to prove it.

Though she had to admit—he was still hot.

She knew better than anyone that any living, breathing woman within close proximity to David Brandon, aka Daniel Burnett, would be subject to a raging surge of lust. But while she’d come here anticipating a tug of attraction from the leftover riptides of their fast and furious affair, she hadn’t expected to nearly drown.

The minute she’d seen him from across the crowded casino, she’d fallen backward in time. Her nerve endings had sizzled and her brain, conditioned over the past five years to block out the memory of the night he’d approached her for the first time in a darkened museum gallery, had betrayed her with pImages** vibrant with sex and sensuality. From that first whispered innuendo, he’d turned her inside out, exposing the desires she’d kept so carefully hidden from everyone in her life, her fiancé included.

But she was older now. Stronger. She’d tried other avenues to reclaim her painting before it exposed her family—mostly her father—to derision and ridicule.

Lust aside, she couldn’t allow her fears to stop her plan. It wasn’t a wise plan. It certainly wasn’t remotely ethical. But that ship had sailed a long time ago. Trying to reclaim her good-girl status now was like trying to win back her virginity. The only thing she had left from her days before Daniel had charmed his way into her life was her reputation. If she didn’t act soon, that would be at risk, too.

“Abby, wait.”

His voice traveled over the retreating sounds of the casino, but she didn’t break her stride. The doors from the lobby to the street slid open, blasting her head to toe with cool night air that had, only hours before, clung to her with the warm, wet heat that made Louisiana so infamous. Tracking Daniel down to New Orleans had been no small feat. She might never have found him if he hadn’t made the unexpected mistake of getting himself arrested in California. “Abby!”

He grabbed her arm and his touch was electric. The sensation of his palm wrapped around her wrist ratcheted up her heartbeat until she was certain he could feel her pulse. She tried to yank herself free, but he held her fast.

“Let go of me.”

“We need to talk.”

He pressed his thumb intimately on her pulse point. The pounding intensified in her ears and heat suffused her system until tiny beads of sweat trickled at her nape and between her breasts. Her brain flashed with a memory. The two of them, naked, in front of her fireplace. Ice cubes. His thirsty tongue.

She pulled harder. “Don’t touch me.”

His face twisted with confusion, but he instantly let her go.

“What the hell, Abby? You came on to me back there, not the other way around. Now I can’t lay a hand on you just to stop you from running?”

“I wasn’t running,” she said, gulping in air. “And yes, that’s the deal.”

“What if I don’t agree to the terms?”

She took another deep breath and released it slowly. She hadn’t come here to give him an ultimatum. She’d meant to entice him to do this one favor, to repay her for what he’d put her through. She’d expected residual chemical attraction to him, but she hadn’t expected fear.

“If you won’t help me, I’ll find someone else who will.”

He eyed her warily, but didn’t immediately walk away. She had to get herself together. Remember her endgame. Stick to her plan. She’d banked on Daniel still caring about her. She’d hoped, stupidly perhaps, that he’d cultivated a bit of real remorse since she’d left her bedroom the night before her wedding with her dress unzipped and Daniel long gone.

“Why do you need the painting all of a sudden?”

“The man who owns it now plans to not only display it, but auction it off. I have less than a week to get it back before everyone knows about my grandmother and her affair with that artist.”

“I don’t get it,” Daniel said, his voice doubtful. “You’re the original owner. If he puts it on display, the whole world will know it was stolen.”

“After you took it, I never reported it stolen. My father hated that portrait. To him, it’s salt in the wound of his mother cheating on his father and all the years of bullying and taunting he suffered through as a kid because of it. He’s had years to forget about that pain, and now it’s going to be dragged up again because I let you steal it. My grandmother gave the painting to me to keep it safe, to keep our family secrets just that.”

“Why didn’t she destroy it?”

Abby’s blood heated. “I don’t know,” she lied. “Maybe she appreciated the artist’s talent. Maybe she intended to keep it as financial insurance. All I know is that I was supposed to keep the painting out of the public eye. Once this collector shows it, art historians will trip over themselves trying to figure out who the subject is. She was the wife of a prominent Chicago businessman. Her picture dominated the society columns every other day. It won’t take long for our family secrets to be made very public—including mine.”

Daniel snorted. “No one cares about scandals anymore, sweetheart. With the publicity, your father can probably double the per-square-foot price of his properties.”

“Do you know how hard it is, still, for someone with the last name Albertini in a city like Chicago? Italian last name? Whispered ties to the old mob? It never really stops, no matter how many charities you fund or legitimate businesses you own and operate without so much as a fine from the IRS. And how do you think my father will feel, personally, when a nude portrait of his mother is all over the papers?”

“As I recall, she was a gorgeous woman.”

Abby growled. “That’s not the point. The painting is proof of an affair my grandmother had with the artist—an affair that has been a family secret for a long time. But people gossiped like crazy and my grandmother’s greatest regret was how those whispers hurt my father, who was just a little kid. I can’t let my mistakes drag out all that old pain again. Besides, once art experts start digging into the painting’s authenticity and history, someone is going to connect the dots about us, too. Ever consider what that kind of publicity will do to your business?”

His eyebrows shot up, but only for a second. “You had an affair with some jerk named David Brandon. No one will connect him to me.”

“Oh, really? I did.”

“I told you who I was.”

“And the police in California made note of that same alias when you were arrested for attempted murder. It won’t take long for a good reporter to make the connections. And I expect it will be hard to sneak into people’s homes or famous museums when your face is splashed all over the latest news feeds. You have as much on the line as I do.”

She turned back to the street, hoping to spot her limousine from the line outside the casino entrance. Maybe this was a mistake. Five years felt like five seconds with Daniel standing so near. The emotions he provoked, from lust to anger to passion to betrayal, rushed at her from every direction.

The deeper she tried to dig herself out of this mess, the worse it got. She’d managed to keep the details of her relationship with Daniel secret from everyone, even her parents. They knew that she’d been duped by a con man, but she’d never told them that she’d slept with him or that she’d practically handed over the safe’s combination when he’d coaxed the story of her grandmother’s rebellious affair with the artist, Bastien Pierre-Louis, out of her.

The only person who knew the whole truth had been Marshall. To him, she’d confessed everything. Not the sordid details—she’d spared him that pain—but she’d been brutally honest about her weaknesses and how Daniel had played to every single one.

And yet, for reasons she’d never completely understand, he’d forgiven her. They’d had to work hard to rebuild their relationship, but in the end, they’d been happy. If her past sins came to light, Marshall’s memory would be tarnished, too. She couldn’t allow that to happen.

She cursed, unable to spot her driver. The delay gave Daniel a chance to walk around in front of her. Though he’d slipped his hands casually into his pockets, his tight jaw and focused stare were anything but relaxed.

“I’m the last person you should ask for help.”

“No, you’re the only person I can ask. You already know the painting’s history and you owe me. It was hard to track you down, but no harder than asking you for help.”

“Do you think staying away from you has been easy? For five years, I’ve pretended you didn’t exist. I let you have your perfect marriage with your perfect man. Now you show up here acting like a sex goddess on the prowl, make me an offer I can’t refuse, but then freak out after one innocent touch? I’m a thief, Abby. Not a monster. I hurt you once. I won’t do it again.”

She swallowed deeply, then straightened her spine, determined to regain her control. He sounded so sincere, but she knew better than to fall for his line, no matter how artfully he delivered it. Daniel Burnett couldn’t be trusted with her emotions. She wasn’t even sure she could trust herself with them.

“I have no reason to believe you,” she said. “But if you agree to help me, I have no choice but to take you at your less-than-reliable word.”

“So we’re both backed into a corner.”

He stretched out his right hand, but stopped just a millimeter shy of touching her cheek. In the span of a heartbeat, his attention shifted from her to the ring on his right hand, the one he’d been trying desperately to get off when she’d first seen him in the bar.

She grabbed the opportunity to change the subject.

“What is that?”

“Recently inherited family treasure.”

He turned his hand so she could see the stone. As jewelry went, it was fairly pathetic. The black opals on the sides were brilliant with bright blues and greens, but the center stone, which caught the marquee lights with more brilliance than she expected, had a huge, zigzagged scratch.

“Maybe you can barter with the collector who has my painting,” she suggested. The two items were nowhere near equal value, but she couldn’t ignore the irony that he now possessed a family treasure when he’d been responsible for stealing hers.

“If I could get the damned thing off my finger. But it’s supposed to bring luck, so to speak, to the men in my family. Could come in handy while I’m breaking my rule of never stealing the same piece of art twice.”

Her heart skipped a beat. “You’re going to help me?”

“Yes, and not because of the threat to my livelihood. You may not believe me, but I’m helping you because it’s the right thing to do.”

His voice inflected with his obvious disbelief, but before she could question his sincerity, he gestured gallantly toward the line of limousines and gave her a little bow, as if inviting her to lead the way.

Her shoes were rooted to the sidewalk.

“Without any expectations?”

He looked up at the dark night sky as if asking for divine intervention. “Really, woman, when you have the advantage, take it and run.”

Abby opened her mouth to object, but then decided to quit while she was ahead. The hard part of this operation, apparently, was not getting Daniel on board—but keeping him from running roughshod over her.

She had to stay focused. Eyes on the prize.

And hands off the merchandise.

She finally spotted her limo. With a nod to the driver, she slid into the backseat, adjusting her skirt as the car dipped slightly while Daniel climbed in beside her. Despite the roominess of the interior, he sat as close to her as he could.

The driver slammed the door.

“There’s space in this car for eight people,” she said. “Feel free to spread out.”

He made that clicking sound with his tongue. “Thanks, but I’m fine here.”

She’d had no illusions that he’d make this easy, but she was up to the challenge. She had to be.

She gave the driver instructions to take them straight to the airport, and then didn’t object when Daniel closed the glass partition.

“Should we stop anywhere to retrieve your things?” she asked.

“You can buy me whatever I need.”

“What you need most can’t be bought,” she quipped.

He chuckled. “Clever. So you’ve developed a sharp tongue since last we met?”

“I’ve developed a lot of things. I was a child when last we met.”

He turned so that his body, so close, faced hers. “You were a lot of things, Abigail Alexandra Albertini, but a child you were not.”

She didn’t remember ever telling him her alliterative middle name, but his casual use of it reminded her how much more he knew about her than she did about him.

To find Daniel Burnett, she’d had to employ several private investigators. Each one had provided tidbits of his past, disjointed and disconnected, until she’d pieced them together into an incomplete picture of his life.

His mother had turned him over to family services when he was five years old. She’d died of a drug overdose about a year later. He’d been shuttled from foster home to foster home until he was ten, when he’d landed with the Burnett family, who’d adopted him. His juvenile record included multiple counts for petty theft and trespassing, but by the time he turned eighteen, his name disappeared from arrest records. He’d been interviewed about a few cases in his early twenties and the name Daniel Burnett had dominated watch lists for museums, collectors and auction houses worldwide since, but he had never been prosecuted, not even after a security guard was seriously injured at the site of his last job.

When she combined what she’d learned from her private investigators with what she knew from their affair, the idea that he’d nearly killed someone struck her as unlikely. Even after he’d betrayed her trust in the worst possible way, Daniel was a lover, not a fighter. She couldn’t believe he’d try to kill someone.

“What happened in California?” she asked.

“I grew up in California,” he answered. “Many things happened there.”

“I mean your arrest.”

“Rethinking your decision to tap me for the honor of retrieving your stolen property?” he asked, his eyes glittering with his tease—one likely meant to divert her line of questioning.

“No,” she said. “It’s just that part of your appeal as a thief is that up until a couple of months ago, you’d never seen the inside of a jail cell for more than a few hours. And you definitely never hurt anyone.”

“You’ve checked up on me?”

“Of course,” she replied.

“Smart girl,” he admitted. “You probably won’t believe this, but I was set up for that mess in California.”

“By whom?”

He leaned back into the seat and eyed her again, this time warily. Had he not expected her to take him at his word?

“Might have been you, now that I think about it. You couldn’t see me jailed for what I did to you, so maybe you arranged for me to be railroaded for something else.”

She shook her head. “There’s a huge flaw in that logic.”

“Really?”

“Oh, yes. If I was going to frame you for a crime, I’d do it in Illinois, not California. We don’t have the death penalty, so you’d have to suffer longer.”

He snickered at her joke and she was surprised she’d made it. She was supposed to be angry at him, or at least wary of him. But in the span of twenty minutes, she’d already started meeting his teases with her own.

“Do you think the person who set you up is still out to get you?” she asked, returning the conversation to her most serious concern.

“Nah,” he said. “But it’s sweet that you’re worried about me.”

This time, her laugh was a burst of genuine humor. “I’m not worried about you. I’m worried about someone getting in the way of you retrieving my painting. The collector has already sent out invitations to art lovers all around Chicago, promising to reveal an unknown work by Bastien Pierre-Louis next week. The buzz in local circles is getting louder every day. This operation needs to be quick and simple. No complications.”

Daniel laughed, retrieved two glasses from the limousine’s bar and then commandeered the champagne she’d taken from the casino and poured. “Then you’re out of luck, sweetheart. If you don’t want complications, you picked the wrong man.”

4

FROM A SEAT IN the back of Abigail’s private jet, Danny watched her move up the aisle and marveled at how much she’d changed—and how much she had stayed the same. She was still beautiful and slim, still graceful and minimal in her movements, still sweet and charming as she spoke in hushed tones to her pilot and copilot, who nodded and smiled with deferential respect when she was facing them, but checked out her ass when she left the cockpit.

Shifting in his seat, Danny made eye contact. Their hungry grins vanished. The captain tipped his hat and then quickly shut the door.