A Kiss in the Dark (Sam and Rick #2)

Chapter 8

8

Thursday, 9:58 a.m.

S am watched as Sang-Wook Rhee, alarm installation specialist for Sotheby’s, attached the last bundle of wires to the pressure sensor system. That gave her protection against motion, pressure, temperature, and broken circuits—also known as opening things that were supposed to remain closed.

While she didn’t like that all the mechanicals were in the basement, quiet and isolated and out of view, she did approve of the only entrance to the equipment room being inside the Victorian. If Martin wanted to disable the alarms, he would have to beat them, first. He could try cutting power to the place, of course, but they had battery backups for ninety percent of the security systems, and any power outage would trip the main alarm, anyway.

“It certainly looks impressive,” Anne said.

Pushing back at the shiver the woman’s voice elicited and beginning to wonder if she could just avoid having alone time with Anne Hughes at all today, Sam nodded. “You ready for a test, Rhee?”

He sat back on his little folding seat. “Yep. I’ve already alerted Sotheby’s and the PD. What do you want to start with?”

“Let’s do pressure.” She lifted her walkie. “Alec? Make sure the second-floor west window is locked, then try lifting it anyway.”

“Copy.” Pause. “It’s locked.” Pause. “Lifting in three, two, one, go.”

A heartbeat later the upper right panel lit up in festive red, a deafening claxon filled every room of the house including the basement, and both Anne’s and her phone whooped in the ugliest, most grating tone she’d been able to find. She lifted hers. “‘Pressure sensor alarm,’” she read aloud, having to yell to be heard over the alarm, “‘second floor, window number 7. Police notified.’ Or they would be, generally.” She nodded at Rhee. “Reset it, please.”

The sound abruptly cut off, leaving her ears ringing. Even if nothing else happened, that damn noise would affect her concentration during a robbery. That was how she’d wanted it, though—physically painful.

“It won’t even wait for one of us to confirm that it’s not an accident?” Anne asked, speaking a little loudly as she read the same information on her iPad.

“Nope. An alarm goes off, police are alerted.”

“So even if a patron leans on a windowsill, that alarm is set to blast out people’s eardrums and the police are going to show up?”

“Yep.” Was it too much? Did she have the settings wound up to eleven when they should be at a one or two? Did fucking Martin have her overreacting? Damn it, she didn’t even know if there was such a thing where Martin Jellicoe was concerned.

“Good,” Anne stated, surprising Samantha. “I’d rather have to pay the city for multiple false alarms than have it not go off when it should.”

“I did tell Alec to yank on the window pretty hard,” Sam admitted.

“Can we go push on something and see how much pressure it takes to set off the alarm?”

“We’re clear with the PD for…”—the technician checked his phone—“another twenty-three minutes. Shove away, Anne. I’ll reset when Sam gives me a thumbs-up.”

Being a hundred percent without guaranteed backup on the way for thirty minutes would normally have freaked her out, but none of the valuables were coming in until tomorrow morning. They were even knocking off early today; yesterday, before Donner’s text to Rick, that would have had Sam thinking of checking Rick out of work and going sightseeing or something, but now the slow day had her all jumpy and wishing something would happen to keep her from having to talk to Anne about the thing .

Sam blew out her breath as she followed Anne upstairs to the main floor. Now or never . “Hey, do you want to go get lunch somewhere after this?” she asked.

Anne sent her a glance over one shoulder. “Well, I was going to go back to the office and obsessively check my phone every four seconds, but sure. I can be obsessive while I’m eating.”

All morning Sam had been doing her own obsessing, reviewing every word the older woman spoke to decide whether she and Anne did have some speech patterns or mannerisms or looks in common like Rick claimed they did. That last one did sound like it might have come from either of them, damn it all.

How did that work, when she hadn’t set eyes on Anne Hughes in twenty-one years? Could a four-year-old pick up speech patterns and mannerisms when she probably couldn’t even wipe her own butt? This was driving her crazy, and her fight-or-flight instincts were yelling at her to climb into an airplane and fly to Paris or Hong Kong or anywhere that didn’t share a time zone with New York and Anne Hughes.

This was not the kind of adrenaline rush she enjoyed. And watching Anne nudge the window harder and harder until the alarm blasted wasn’t helping her composure. Sam texted the all-clear to the basement crew but kept her finger hovering over the little photo of Rick that she would only have to tap to get him on the line and then over here as fast as Benny could drive him. He would talk to Anne for her; he’d volunteered to do it. And she could wait outside, preferably in a running car.

That, though, wouldn’t be fair to Anne. Assuming, of course, that Anne really was the innocent party in all this, and that she hadn’t been a rip-roaring bitch who’d driven Martin away and then filed the missing person’s report on Sam—Sarah—just to spite him. Talking to Anne for two minutes, though, made that theory way doubtful, just as talking to Martin for half a second made the biggest surprise that any woman had agreed to marry his lying, self-centered ass in the first place.

All that was just more distraction, though, crap to keep her from focusing on the idea that in the next twenty minutes or so she was going to have to tell Anne Hughes that her daughter had been located, and that Bradley Martin was Martin Jellicoe. And that other thing, that ta da, Sarah Martin was Sam Jellicoe, and she was standing right there in front of her.

“If you guys are going to keep shoving and lifting and punching things, I’m going to have to call the NYPD back and tell them to ignore us for another thirty minutes,” Sang-Wook Rhee said over the walkie.

“I’m convinced,” Anne said with a grin. “And relieved, hopefully not prematurely. This is a nice job, Sam. Really nice.”

“Thanks. I’ll still be happier once everything is auctioned off and out of Sotheby’s hands.”

“As will I. Let’s get everybody out of here and start moving the valuables in tomorrow morning.”

With a nod Sam told Rhee to disarm everything until she could get the rest of the crew out. Once it was just him, her, and Anne left, he set all the alarms to active and they left the building. Yesterday she would have spent the rest of the day and night doing what Anne had suggested—obsessively checking her cellphone for anybody lurking around the Victorian. Now, though, she had a couple of other things taking up her brain space.

“Where to for lunch?” Anne asked, dumping her iPad into her bulky purse.

Oh, boy. Time’s up . “How about we just head off in that direction, and see what happens?” Sam suggested, pointing east.

“Works for me. I doubt we can get half a block without running across a deli or something.”

Anne made a good point, and since Sam wanted to do this out in the open where she had room to run, she took a deep breath. “I need to talk to you about a couple of things.”

“Don’t say you’re backing out now,” Anne said, glancing sideways at her. “I mean, I know the security stuff is wired in, but I want you supervising the placement of every item going into the exhibition.”

“I’m not backing out. Though you may ask me to, after this.”

“Ah. Is this where you tell me that your father was Martin Jellicoe, renowned cat burglar? I told you that I looked into you before I made that phone call. You have an insight that not many other people in the world possess. And you’ve used that insight to do good. I applaud that.”

Man, any more of this, and Sam was just going to pass out. “Yeah. Thanks. The thing is, Martin Jellicoe…Well, he didn’t always go by that name when he was pulling jobs. I don’t know all his aliases, but sometimes he went by Bob Martine, or Frank Bradley, or Brad Cassidy…or Bradley Martin.”

Anne stopped in her tracks, so fast a guy in a gray suit nearly bashed into her from behind before he flipped her off and went around. “What?” she said faintly, her face going chalky gray.

Maybe the out-in-the-open thing had been a mistake. “He might be lurking around here somewhere,” Sam muttered, moving in closer but not ready to grab Anne’s arm. She might get punched for one thing, or if Martin was watching and saw Anne flinch or something, he’d know his little game was paying some dividends. Unless he’d been counting on staying a step ahead of them, and he’d meant to spring this surprise on them at just the right time. Hm . That was worth thinking about—just not at this moment. “Let’s keep walking, shall we?”

With a hard breath Anne nodded, setting off again at a walk that was way too fast even for New York. “I’m going in there,” she stammered, pointing at a Starbuck’s.

“Good. Okay.”

Anne walked straight past the counter toward the bathroom at the back. When one of the baristas yelled that she had to buy something to use the restroom, Sam pulled a twenty out of her pocket and slapped it onto the counter. Then she followed Anne into the single ladies’ room and locked the door behind them.

While Anne stood in the far corner and stared at the white tile walls like she could make them melt, Sam looked at her all over again. Yeah, she’d been doing that all morning, and part of her wanted to see some…difference that would mean they couldn’t possibly be related, but there were still things that made sense. Brownish hair lightening as gray strands worked their way in, not her own auburn but not that far off from it, the same height within an inch or two, green eyes a little grayer than hers, the same shaped mouth…and a similar dry humor and appreciation of the absurd, even though Sam had no idea if those things could be inherited or if it was just a coincidence.

“Hey!” A male fist pounded on the door. “Get a damn room for that shit!”

“It’s not like that,” Sam shouted back. “She’s my mom, and we’re having a female issue.”

“Oh. Oh. Okay. Just…don’t take too long.”

Anne’s shoulders lifted. “This is a joke, isn’t it? You’re a grifter, and you think that tricking me into thinking you’re my…my daughter will…get you something, but it won’t. I’m not rich, and I don’t have a Renoir in my dining room, and—”

“The only thing I knew about you was that you were a demanding, buttoned-up bitch, and you threw Martin and me out because you wanted the lifestyle but not the strings.” Sam took a breath. She used to believe that, and she knew who to thank for it. Martin couldn’t even leave her with a fond memory.

“I never—” Anne turned around. “He was charming, and elusive. Reformed, he said. For five years I went along with it, and then half the collection I was curating went missing, and—” She snapped her mouth shut. “None of that matters. You…Are you? Really? Because if this is some weird revenge thing from Bradley, I swear I will—”

“I’m engaged to a really rich guy,” Sam pointed out, not sure why she hadn’t realized Anne might not even believe any of this. But then she’d had time to go through most of the stages of grief or being lied to already, even if she’d kind of stopped at acceptance and being really pissed off at the same time. “I don’t need whatever it is you might have. And I don’t need the publicity that would follow me if I helped Martin rob your exhibit.”

Anne kept staring at her like she had antenna on the top of her head, but Sam put up with it for the moment. She’d been staring at the other woman’s profile all morning, and fair was fair. She resisted the urge to fold her arms, and just looked back.

“You have the same freckle,” Anne finally said, reaching out one shaking finger and touching Sam’s forehead. “I mean, you have several freckles, but I remember that one. Straight over your left eyebrow, halfway between your eyebrow and your hairline. And your right eye has just a tiny bit of brown in it.” She drew a long breath. “You’re her,” she whispered. “You’re Sarah Jane.”

“‘Jane’?” Sam repeated. “Sarah Jane. I think so. And I wasn’t holding out on you. I mean, I was, because I knew Bradley Martin was Martin Jellicoe, but I didn’t know about the daughter thing until last night. Rick—well, his lawyer, Tom Donner—looked into you to try to figure out why Martin would be targeting you. It all kind of weirds me out, so if you don’t—”

Anne threw her arms around Sam’s shoulders and back, pulling her in tight. The older woman’s whole body was shaking, and Sam abruptly worried that she was going to have a heart attack or something. Crap, Sam didn’t like being smothered, but she did get it. That was why she stood still and let Anne hug her, and even patted the other woman’s back a little.

“It’s a lot, I know.”

“He…he changed your name. I should have realized. Bradley Martin, Martin Jellicoe… Dammit. Why Jellicoe? Is it because of Cats ? He took you to see it, and you bugged us about getting a pet cat for weeks.”

Cats . “Fuck,” Sam muttered. “Jellicle cats. Cat burglars. God, I’m an idiot.”

“You were barely more than a baby. I looked…everywhere. I tried finding some of his friends, tracking him down, and that was when I realized I knew literally no one from his life.”

“Did you know he was a thief?” Sam asked, straightening the second Anne relaxed her hold a little.

With a humorless laugh, Anne put her palm against Sam’s cheek. “I fell for a bad boy. He said he’d meant to rob the exhibit I was putting together, and instead he fell for me. And I bought it.”

“He might have meant it,” Sam offered. “Five years without doing a burglary is a looooong time for Martin.”

“Yes, he apparently resisted until the Smithsonian jewel exhibition came to town, with me in charge of staging. That was before I went to work for Sotheby’s, and the last event I was employed by Smithfield for.”

“He got you fired.”

“He got me arrested. But then I really didn’t care, because that night he only came home long enough to grab you and his stupid backpack, lock me in a closet, and leave. If the police hadn’t come, I would have been stuck there for God knows how long.”

“Jeez. I don’t remember any of that, except for him cutting my hair and dying it black. I don’t…”

“You don’t remember me,” Anne finished for her, cupping Sam’s face with both hands now. “That’s okay. But…He told you I was a bitch? Did you—”

“He told me some lies,” Sam interrupted. No need to dwell on the details. “Enough to make me stop asking questions and never go looking for you. Eventually I’ll learn that nothing he ever says is the truth.”

“At least he kept you on the legitimate side of his business. You’ve made good use of that.”

Okay, this was the really tricky part. Just knowing that Anne hadn’t kicked them to the curb, that she had looked for her daughter, didn’t mean she could be trusted with all those secrets and jobs that hadn’t yet run out their statutes of limitations. “Not so much,” she settled for saying. “But I met Rick, and I retired. For good. And for real.”

“He made you rob people? That son of a bitch.”

“You can blame him for the stuff when I was a kid, but I’m a grown-ass woman, Anne. The last couple of years, since I turned fifteen, really, are all me. And I’d tell you more, but I’ve only had a mom for like twelve hours.”

For a long couple of seconds Anne looked at her again. Really looked at her, in the way that made her wonder if she had lettuce between her teeth or something. She was probably running it all through her head, Martin and Sarah/Sam burgling through the years, hanging off wires and robbing shit, Tom Cruise Mission Impossible style. And that wasn’t a bad comparison. “My God. Sarah,” she finally whispered.

“Samantha,” Sam said, shaking her head. “Sam. And I’m wondering now if he set things up to get me here, so he could spring this little surprise on you and mess us both up enough to rob the exhibit of everything but the light bulbs.” She took a breath. “So, my point is, when we leave Starbuck’s you will have a coffee in your hands, we will be amused at each other’s wit, and we’ll have no idea that we’re related.”

“If you’re telling me the truth. I certainly haven’t had time to logic myself through every possible scenario. You have a point about your association with Rick, but I suppose you could be scamming him, too.”

Well, she hadn’t expected that response. “How does that scenario go, then? Martin put me up to this so we can rob you together? And he offered me enough that I couldn’t pass it up, even with Rick Addison putting an engagement ring on my finger? Does that make me related to you, or am I an actress he hired to play the part of Samantha Sarah Jane Jellicoe Martin?”

“I…don’t know. It’s just that you said you found all this out last night, and you’re cool as a cucumber, while I’m a blubbering mess. We haven’t seen each other in twenty-one years.”

Sam leaned back against the door. Okay, she was going to have to trust Anne a little more than she’d anticipated. “I grew up thinking of people as marks. Targets, idiots to be robbed.”

“Oh, Sam.”

“After Martin and I split up, and before Rick, I traveled everywhere alone. I have safe houses scattered between here and Florida, with a couple in Europe. I’m used to relying on myself. I can count the number of people I trust in the world on two, maybe three, fingers. And until yesterday I did think you were a bitch who kicked your guy and your four-year-old daughter out of your house and never looked back, so neither did I. So sorry if I’m not all weepy, but I can guarantee you that I’m pretty freaked out. And I’m pretty fucking angry at Martin for lying to me about…everything.”

Slowly, Anne nodded. “I can see that. I’m so, so sorry that I couldn’t find you. There hasn’t been a day when I didn’t think of you and wonder where you were, if you were safe, or happy, or if you were married and had babies of your own.” She gulped an unsteady breath. “I had no idea he’d turned me into Maleficent.”

“And here I am, bad Robin Hood.” Sam forced a short smile. “Do you trust that I’m not working with him? If you don’t, I’ll take the next flight back to Florida. That might even mess up Martin’s plans, and he’ll leave you alone.”

She didn’t entirely believe that, but if Martin had put in a word here and sent a note there, enough to send Anne after help and to ask it of Sam, then her leaving might at least throw him off his game a little.

“No. I just…You’re not going anywhere, Sam.” Anne clutched her arm again. Hard.

Not good, not good. Sam clenched her free hand into a fist to keep from yanking away. Normal people hugged and shit. She could put up with it from her mom, for cripe’s sake.

Anne took a deep breath. “I…This was not how I thought today would go,” she muttered, shaking her head. “But I’ve wanted every day for the past twenty-one years to go exactly like this.”

“With maybe less thievery involved,” Sam countered, slipping into what was probably a smile.

“That doesn’t even matter today. I…I think it all boils down to the fact that you told me all this, when you didn’t have to. I’m going to remember to breathe, and then we’ll go out and I’ll buy a caramel macchiato, and maybe you could invite me over to dinner tonight so we can actually talk somewhere that doesn’t smell like pee and lemon soap.”

That opened up a whole other mess of questions about how far Sam even wanted Anne in her life, but for crying out loud, the woman had found her daughter. “Deal. Let’s say seven o’clock tonight. I’ll text you the address. In the meantime, you hired me, you’re still nervous about Bradley Martin, and the exhibition items start showing up tomorrow at nine in the morning.”

“Yes. Yes.” Tugging on her blouse to straighten it, Anne took a couple more deep breaths, nodded, and reached past Sam to unlock the door.

Samantha didn’t pay much attention to the rest of their brief conversation because it was just the weather and being ready for tomorrow, and a “see you later” for effect. As she walked a half block away in the opposite direction of Anne to hail a cab, she almost felt like she was two people, one of them calmly—well, pretty calmly—watching a woman reunite with her mother after twenty-one years apart, and the other one just kind of weirdly confused by the whole experience.

Anne would have been happier with mutual weeping and more hugs and more…joy, but Samantha just wasn’t built that way. A lot of years of experience made her approach everything with a cynical, practical eye, and while she had no problem with risking herself physically, she kept all the other stuff walled up like Fort Knox. Hell, even admitting to herself that she loved Rick had taken way longer than it should have.

“Where to?” a familiar male voice said from car level next to her.

For a quarter of a second she froze before she turned to look at the late model Mercedes stopped at the curb. “The gray color isn’t bad,” she commented coolly, “but isn’t the model a little flashy for you?”

Martin Jellicoe, his eyes unreadable behind a pair of Maui Jim sunglasses, curved his mouth in a smile. “It was convenient. So you’re finished with the security installation, eh? The good stuff comes in tomorrow, I hear.”

“Is this what you do, now? Drive around Manhattan waiting for me to come out of shops so you can try to rattle me with stuff that half the employees at Sotheby’s know? I hope you didn’t pay your snitch more than fifty bucks for that one.”

Her father clicked his tongue. “So cynical, you are. You didn’t have to take this job at all, you know, and I’d be driving around Manhattan while you were in Palm Beach.”

“Yeah, sorry, not going to let you bully some poor woman because you think it makes you look cool, Martin. Or is it Bradley, for this one? I don’t think it’s a coincidence that this alias of yours shares initials with bowel movement.”

His jaw jumped, almost imperceptibly, but she caught it. He didn’t like being made fun of. “Are we doing the juvenile stuff now?” he retorted, flipping off a delivery truck behind him when the guy honked. “Do I point out that Rick rhymes with prick or something?”

“You could do that,” Sam agreed, not even close to taking that bait, “or you could just drive away. I’m not keeping you here. Didn’t ask you to stop by, either.”

“Fine. Last warning, then. Go home. Drop this one. You won’t like what happens at the end of it.”

“You’ve told me that twice. Are you Babe Ruth now, calling your shots? ‘Hey, I’m going to rob this place, so make sure you look the other way’?” Yeah, she was deliberately misreading his comments, because the more he talked about the end of this gig, the more she realized that he did mean to spring her relationship with Anne Hughes on her, shock the fuck out of her, and steal all the Adgerton collection while she lay on the floor, flopping around like an electrocuted fish. What a douche.

“Something like that. No more warnings, Sam.”

“Then for God’s sake, stop warning me. I get it. You want me here because you want to beat me, which you’ll find even more satisfying because you’ve told me not to try it. Go for it, Martin. Just stop talking about it. In fact,” and she pulled her phone out of her back pocket as she spoke, “I’m giving you five seconds, and then I’m calling 911. I’m done with you. Really.”

“You don’t know everything, kid. You should have listened to me.”

“Nine,” she said, and tapped the corresponding number. “One. O—”

“Be seeing you,” he snapped, and pulled back into traffic, nearly clipping another Mercedes. He wouldn’t care, though, because the SL wasn’t his, and because he’d be ditching it as soon as he turned the corner.

Sam hit the back key and finally mashed her finger on Rick’s face. “Samantha,” his voice said, before the phone even rang.

“Guess who has two parents and just had a face-to-face with each of ’em?”

“Christ.”

“No, me.” Faintly in the background of his call a woman called out a mocha frap, and Sam frowned. “Where are you?”

“Clearly not close enough, if Martin got to you. Dammit, Samantha. I’m heading to the Victorian. I’ll be there in two minutes.”

Glancing over her shoulder, she turned around and started an easy trot back toward the exhibit space. “Roger that. Bye.”

Earlier, she might have been ticked off that he’d once again followed her to her job site, but at the moment she was just glad he was close. He reached the corner just as she slowed down at the door. Rick didn’t stop until he was close enough to reach out and take her hand in his.

“Where is he?” he muttered, his gaze shifting from her face to the view over her shoulder.

“Probably in New Jersey by now. He was in a stolen Mercedes SL. Left when I started dialing the cops.”

With his free hand he dug into his coat pocket for his phone. He had a thin stack of folders beneath his other arm, she noticed. Apparently, he’d been working in some café or something, just so he could be close by her. Man, did he get extra points for that, today. “Did you get the license number?”

It wouldn’t do any good; Martin would be half a mile or more away from wherever it was he’d abandoned the SL. On the other hand, she’d told him she would call the cops. There was a slight chance that he might at least stick around to see if she was bluffing. And if she wasn’t, it might possibly have him thinking twice about the Sotheby’s job. “It said BIGDEAL,” she answered. “One word. Tinted windows. Gunmetal gray.”

He lifted an eyebrow. “That’s rather on the nose, isn’t it?” Then someone picked up the other end of his call, and he reported that a man had just broken into a Mercedes, then passed on the information she’d given him.

It was a useless exercise, but a couple of months ago it would have bothered her a lot. Just the idea of ratting out anyone from her so-called profession, let alone her own father, would have given her the shakes. Now, though, she gave in to the briefest of daydreams where cops did catch Martin red-handed, and he went back to prison for a really long time for grand theft auto, of all things.

If she went along with that daydream, though, she would have to also consider that as soon as the cuffs went on, Martin would start negotiating. And even though he couldn’t prove much of it, he could definitely point his finger in her direction enough to make the FBI and Interpol really, really interested.

“What are the odds that he’s watching us right now?” Rick asked as he pocketed his phone again.

“Nil. He thinks he’s a couple of steps ahead of me. Which means he’d be well away in case I did call the cops.”

“Definitely long gone, then?”

She nodded.

Rick stepped forward and wrapped his arms around her. For a second Sam felt like an overfilled balloon that had just let all its air out. He was a strong guy, physically and mentally, and for a couple of minutes, at least, she could be as weak and wimpy as she wanted to be, because he would hold her up.

Sighing against his shoulder, she held onto him as tightly as he held her. “This has not been a good morning,” she grumbled, then reluctantly straightened again.

As soon as she pushed at him, he let her go—mostly, shifting to grip one of her hands again. “Where to?” he asked.

She pointed forward with her free fingers. “That way.”

For two blocks they walked in silence. Rick had to be going crazy wanting to know about both her conversations, but he didn’t ask her. Instead, he just held her hand and walked beside her while she puzzled out her personal shit. And boy, she had a lot of that, all of a sudden.

“Anne kept grabbing and hugging me,” Sam finally mumbled. “Maybe I should have just hugged her back, but you know, I kept thinking about that ‘three versions of a story’ thing.”

“His version, her version, and the truth?” Rick supplied.

“Yeah. That was probably just an excuse, though, because I have no reason to think she was anything but exactly the opposite of what Martin described. It was too much. I’m not a huggy person.”

“She believed you, though?”

“Not at first. She thought I might be working with Martin to mess with her. Then she was all, ‘thank goodness you used the horrible things he taught you for good, and not evil,’ which I kind of corrected her about. No details, though.”

“Good.”

“So, anyway, she’s coming to the apartment for dinner tonight.”

“I’m glad you’re willing to talk to her about all this.”

“What, you thought I’d just bolt?”

He shrugged. “I’ve heard your opinion of emotional entanglements. This is a big one.”

“It’s kind of spooky, sometimes, how well you know me, Mr. Addison.” And even spookier to realize that not only had she let that happen, but she appreciated that he knew when to give her space and knew when to push—whether she liked that or not.

Leaning sideways, he kissed her on the temple. “You’re something of an obsession of mine. What did Martin want?”

“He wanted to make sure I knew he was watching. Warned me again that I wouldn’t like what happened if I stuck with this gig. I think he’s planning to spring the ‘Anne is your mother’ thing on me,” she said, doing her best Darth Vader impression, “and then lift whatever it is he’s after from the exhibit while I die from shock and amazement at his big, devious brain.”

Rick took a hard breath and let it out again. “I admit that I’ve never been fond of Martin Jellicoe,” he murmured. “At this moment, though, I would welcome the opportunity to have a face-to-face chat with him.”

Well, she knew what that meant. “I doubt anybody’s ever set him on his ass. It might be interesting.”

“Interesting, my love, doesn’t begin to cover it.”

She leaned her head against his shoulder, hugging his arm with her free hand. “Are you sure you wouldn’t rather marry a nice girl from the country? Someone with a loving, supportive set of parents you could invite over for the holidays without first having to check to see if one of them has outstanding warrants, or if the other one remembers what her daughter looks like?”

“That sounds rather dull. And since with those parents you wouldn’t have become you, Samantha, I have to decline.”

“Yeah, but I have so much baggage. More than I even knew about.”

That earned her a snort. “Have you met me?” he returned. “I carry about a bit of baggage, myself. Do you want a list?”

“What I really want,” she said, “is to go home to the apartment and wrap myself around some Rick Addison. And to not think about anything but Rick sex for a good couple of hours.”

He stopped, pulled out his cellphone, and texted something. “Roger that,” he said. “Do give me a moment to tell Andre that we’ll need him for tonight. Meal suggestions?”

“Spaghetti. I’m not a fancy girl. And we’re not trying to impress Anne as anything but my boss. My temporary boss.” That other stuff, the sticky, complicated stuff, was going to have to wait until she’d burned off some damn adrenaline.

His car pulled up to the curb, Benny behind the wheel. “Where to, Mr. A?” he asked as Rick handed her into the back seat and followed her, pulling the door shut door behind him.

“The apartment. And there’s a bonus for you if we make it there in under fifteen minutes.”

“Good as done,” Vinny said, and revved the engine.

Rick put up the glass barrier between the front and back seats, took her chin in one hand to kiss her deep and slow, and slid his other hand between her thighs. Oh, that definitely started her engine revving, too.