Too Wicked to Keep

He had a hard time reconciling that shy, repressed young woman with the vixen now sashaying up the aisle as if she meant to torture him with what he could not have.

And on this, she was succeeding.

She slid into the leather seat across from his, her skirt riding up an extra inch or two that the dress simply didn’t have to give.

“Want anything before we take off?” she asked.

Oh, he wanted a lot of things—none of which he was going to get anytime soon.

Still, he made a show of glancing around the cabin. “No flight attendants?”

“Just the pilot and copilot.” She clicked her seat belt and waited for Danny to do the same. “We have a lot to talk about. I didn’t want to be disturbed.”

He stretched out his legs so that they were inches from hers. “Sure that’s the only reason you wanted to be alone? To talk?”

She ignored his question. “Who hired you to steal the painting five years ago?”

“Why?”

“Anatomy of a crime,” she explained. “By the time we arrive in Chicago, I want to know everything you do about what happened to my painting.”

“I thought you knew who had it.”

“I do. Or at least, I think I do,” she clarified. “His name is Harris Liebe.”

Danny shrugged. He’d never heard the name before—and this was odd. The fraternity of art collectors who purchased off the black market wasn’t that extensive.

“Never heard of him.”

“Neither have a lot of people. But his little announcement has piqued the interest of the legitimate art world. Bastien Pierre-Louis’s work has been experiencing a resurgence in the last decade. Every year leading up to what would have been the man’s one-hundredth birthday increases the value of his pieces, particularly the unsigned ones he gave away during his lifetime.”

“Like your grandmother’s.”

“Precisely like hers. She was the daughter of a wealthy New York businessman with supposed ties to the mob. My great-grandfather, her father-in-law, had similar connections in Chicago, though his son was legitimate. The whole twisted tale makes the painting worth more than even I could afford.”

“And that’s why your family never insured it?”

“I wanted to. Because I curate for so many private collectors, I have contacts with people who would have been very discreet. But my father wanted no connection to it and asked me not to do anything that would officially connect the painting to our family. And after you took it,” she said, the words shooting out of her mouth like bullets from a twenty-two, “my father asked me not to call the police. He hated that painting. I think he was glad someone took it.”

Now, this was a piece of information Danny would file away for later. He’d never met Abby’s parents, but assumed they’d hate him on sight. If he were a father, he certainly would. But maybe there was a chance, even if it was a long shot, that he’d find a way into the real estate titan’s good graces. Everything about this situation was doomed for failure, but he’d survived most of his life because of his inability to take no for an answer.

“How does your father feel now that the painting is going to be publicly displayed?”

She looked askance. “He doesn’t exactly know.”

“How’d you pull that off?”

“I arranged for my mother to have a sudden need to spend alone time with him in their Italian villa. They’ll be gone for two more weeks.”

Danny leaned back in his seat. “Impressive.”

“I’ve learned to cover all my bases, which is why I need to know everything you know about the collector who paid you to seduce me.”

Danny shook his head. He’d deflect blame for a lot of his misdeeds, but not that one. “That part was entirely my idea. I mean, look at you. Can you blame a guy?”

Her sneer wasn’t nearly as biting as she intended. “Tell me what you know about the first collector.”

He gave up trying to postpone this part of the conversation. He wasn’t used to discussing his business practices with anyone, much less someone he’d used them against.

“The story isn’t that exciting. A collector contacted me, told me about the painting and offered me a shitload of money to steal it.”

“And how does one go about contacting you?”

“Word of mouth.”

“Whose word? Whose mouth?”

That secret he wasn’t sharing. “An associate who takes care of moving my merchandise to the collectors who’ve requested it.”

“So this person is a fence?”

He arched a brow. Abby was nothing if not thorough.

“She’s also a legitimate art appraiser,” he explained, “so she runs in a lot of circles, maybe even some of yours. The collector got word to her that he was interested in hiring me for a job. I met with his representative, who paid my retainer after we negotiated a timetable and a total price. The deal was sealed with a handshake.”

She chuckled humorlessly. “Sounds so clean and professional.”

“It is what it is,” he shot back.

Danny had never defended his lifestyle to anyone before. He’d never needed to. Approval or disapproval of how he made his living had never mattered to him. And even though Abby was now hiring him for the very reasons she sneered at, he knew she’d never approve. How could she, after what he’d done?

“Does your husband know you tracked me down?” he asked, wondering why a smart guy like Marshall Chamberlain would allow his wife to seek him out, particularly while wearing that little black dream of a dress.

He watched her cheek hollow as she sucked on the inner flesh.

That would be a no.

And yet, she replied, “I’d like to think so.”

He glanced at her hand.

She wasn’t wearing a ring.

“Wait a minute.”

Since she’d shown up at the casino, she hadn’t answered a single question about her husband. Until now, he’d figured she was on a secret mission, hoping to keep Marshall from having to relive the incident that almost waylaid their wedding.

But she hadn’t mentioned Marshall at all. In fact, the only time the man had come up in conversation was when Danny had asked.

He leaned forward and gazed purposefully into her eyes, his chest tightening as she tried to keep her face impassive and cool. She was biting the inside of her mouth again, but instead of making her mouth look pinched or prissy, her lips puckered in a way that tugged at his heart.

“What aren’t you telling me?” he asked.

“About a gazillion things that are none of your business,” she snapped.

“I mean about Marshall.”

When Abby had thrown him out of her room on the night before her wedding, Danny had taken the rejection hard. He always spent the weeks after a job underground, but after Chicago, he’d gone completely off the grid in Mexico. After a few cases of tequila and more beer than a man should drink in a lifetime, he’d finally decided that Abby was better off without him. If Marshall Chamberlain loved her enough to forgive her indiscretion, then he must have loved her more than Danny could even comprehend.

So how the hell could he have left her a short five years later?

“I can’t believe he dumped you.”

“He didn’t,” she said, her eyes flaring.

“Then where the hell is he? Or is thievery just beneath him, so he’s left it all to you?”

“There isn’t anything much beneath him anymore except dirt,” she choked out. “He’s dead.”

She made the callous statement, then instantly turned away. She flattened her left palm on the window, as if she needed contact with the glass to cool her emotions. Or maybe she was mourning the absence of her ring. A slight shadow encircled her fourth finger, a reminder of where the band had been. She’d taken it off, but only recently.

“I’m sorry. When?”

She gave a tiny shrug, as if she hadn’t been counting the days, when he guessed she could probably calculate the man’s last breath to the minute.

“A little over a year ago. He was on his way to his office and a semi lost control on the highway and he was gone.”

The crack in the foundation of her voice tore at his insides, but Danny had no right to share her grief. No right to try and comfort her.

But he still had to say something.

“I really am sorry.”

“So am I. But if there was one thing I knew about Marshall, and I knew everything about him,” she said, skewering him with a glare that dared him to challenge her, “it was that he’d want me to move forward. Put the past behind me, once and for all. That was the entire basis for our marriage. He never once threw our affair in my face. He didn’t make me pay for how I betrayed him with you, even though he probably should have.”

Danny couldn’t believe how easily she talked about this. The Abby he’d known had always shied away from discussing anything painful or unpleasant. Despite his offers to meet her out of town, even a suggestion they fly up to Toronto for a rendezvous, their liaisons had only taken place at night, in locked rooms or shadowed corners.

Even when they were alone, she’d been conditioned to keep her deepest thoughts to herself. He’d had to pull out all the stops to sneak behind her private walls. But he’d succeeded, or at least, he’d thought he had. By the time he’d finally learned how to retrieve the painting without triggering her security system, he’d discovered all sorts of things about her that he hadn’t really wanted to know.

Her secret passions.

Her most erotic fantasies.

Her deepest, most desperate dreams.

She’d also confessed how desperately she wanted a man who understood the real her. Not the cool, controlled young lady of wealth that she’d been trained to be, but the innately curious, impassioned lover of sensual beauty that she kept so well hidden.

Before him, she hadn’t revealed that woman to anyone, not even to her fiancé. She’d been too embarrassed, too self-conscious, too afraid that Marshall would run in the other direction quicker than he could say scandal.

David Brandon, on the other hand, knew precisely how to coax that side of her out of hiding. He’d cultivated her need for freedom with honeyed words and wicked suggestions spoken to burn through the layers of her fears. David Brandon did not judge her. How could he, when his whole persona was one big fat lie?

The plane began to move, so they were quiet while the pilot taxied down the runway, gained speed and then altitude. When a ding indicated they’d reached their cruising height, Danny caught Abby staring at him, her eyebrows scrunched tightly together.

“I don’t understand you,” she declared.

“Welcome to the club. I can’t figure me out, and I am, hands down, the smartest guy I know.”

She didn’t crack a smile.

“I mean, I get that you’re all complicated and tragic. Charming on the outside and brooding and miserable on the inside.” She waved her hand, as if her gesture could dismiss the very core of him, which he’d never heard so succinctly summarized. “But why would you come with me so easily? Is it just because you might be exposed?”

“Nope,” he said breezily. “I’m in it for the cash.”

“I didn’t offer you any money. And even if I did, you don’t need it. You have a very wealthy brother who paid a king’s ransom for the criminal attorney who got you out of jail. And you and I both know that you have to have a boatload of cash stashed somewhere. International art thieves don’t come cheap.”

“You’ve certainly learned a lot over the last five years.”

“To say the least,” she replied.

“Care to share some of your wisdom?”

He didn’t know why he was asking. In his entire life, he’d never once asked for anyone’s advice. Sure, he’d watched people he admired and listened carefully whenever they spoke to glean whatever nugget of information he could mine for a greater take, but he’d never out-and-out asked anyone to share their insight about…well, about anything.

Unfortunately, from Abby’s frown, she didn’t look anxious to share.

“I’m sure the things I’ve learned you committed to memory by the age of eight.”

“That everyone is a liar and a thief, you mean. In one way or another?”

“Yeah,” she acknowledged. “That.”

“You’re not,” he argued.

“Not what? A liar? Please, Daniel. Don’t sugarcoat on my account.”

“I’m not,” he insisted. “You told Marshall the truth about us, didn’t you?”

“Only after lying to him for weeks. And I colluded with my mother to get my father out of the country. And I expect that by this time next week, I’ll have lied enough to match your level of expertise.”

She unbuckled her seat belt and retreated to the galley at the back of the plane. She tugged open the built-in wine cooler and extracted a bottle without giving the label a second glance. When her hunt for a corkscrew escalated from frustrated to frantic, he joined her.

“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?”

5

THE 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 brownstone 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.”