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

Chapter 13

13

Sunday, 7:52 p.m.

“I s this how we’re going to be spending our evenings for the next two weeks?” Rick glanced at Sam in the passenger seat beside him, one leg curled beneath her bottom and her lowered gaze on her cellphone, the black-and-white glow making her delicate features pale and turning her auburn hair purplish.

“This is only the third time I’ve checked today,” she responded. “And I only picked it up because Anne texted me to say she hadn’t spotted anything.”

“Which is good. It means everything is going as it should.”

“Maybe I’m still not quite used to the whole ‘nothing happening is the way we want it’ thing. It just seems so…dull.”

He could sympathize; no deal ever made him more suspicious than the one where everything went perfectly. Who would have thought that flaws and bumps would be comforting? And yet they were. They signaled that problems had been found and dealt with—which suggested that there were always problems, which therefore led to the conclusion that problems weren’t always found. “It’s natural to look for imperfections,” he said aloud. “That doesn’t mean they exist.”

“Then I’m doing what comes naturally,” she said, most of her attention clearly still on the camera feeds as she tapped from one to the next. “He knows I’ll have cameras. He knows I’ll have pressure sensors. He knows the windows and doors are all wired. How does he think he’s going to get in? And more importantly, out?”

“I still maintain it could all be harmless—relatively harmless—bellowing. He’s upset that you’ve successfully moved on with your life, and that Anne has regained her status within the antiquities’ community, so he’s doing his best to stir things up. To diminish what should be your pride at a job well done.”

Blowing out her breath, Samantha closed the app, turned over her phone, and tapped it against one knee. “Could be, should be, might be, wanna be,” she muttered. “Honeybee.”

Even an idiot could see that she was trying to be rational about all this, and he wasn’t an idiot. Even though Walter Barstone maintained that she was better at thievery than her father, that she could think circles around Martin and most other people, the fact remained that Martin had more or less raised her and taught her what she knew. This was her test, to prove to herself, at least, that she had surpassed the old crook.

“How about we drive around the building a couple of times before we head back to the apartment?” It was probably wrong to encourage her paranoia, but from what he knew of Martin, her worry might actually be warranted. He’d never had reason before to doubt her instincts about such things, anyway.

“I would be very okay with that. Thanks, Rick.”

“I am nothing if not supportive.”

In another ten minutes they’d reached the old Victorian. He drove as slowly as he could with the traffic that always surrounded the building, turned at the second corner, went back through the alley, and circled around again. “One more time, please,” Samantha said, leaning her forehead against the passenger window.

Her phone rang, to the tune of “Mean Green Mother from Outer Space” from Little Shop of Horrors , one of those quirky movies she favored. “Anne?” he mouthed, and she nodded as she accepted the call.

“Hi,” she said, putting the call on speaker. “Rick’s here, too. What’s up?”

Interesting, that. She disliked when he butted into her actual business, but apparently he was necessary backup where her mother was concerned. Very well. Duly noted.

“I don’t know if it means anything,” Anne’s voice came, “but you said Bradley—Martin—confronted you from a stolen Mercedes. I’ve been watching, and the same Mercedes has circled our building twice now. Oh, there it is again!”

“Hold on. Rick, flash the lights.”

He did so.

“Did you see its lights flash?” Samantha asked, sitting back again.

“Yes. Is that…Oh, it’s you. I’m sorry. I’m just—”

“No, that’s good. I’m glad you noticed. But I think we’re both suffering from Martin-induced anxiety. So Rick and I are going back to the apartment now, and you’re going to put down the phone and iPad and turn on the TV and watch a movie. Okay?”

Anne’s sigh sounded extremely familiar. “Okay. You do the same, though.”

“Yep. I’m making Rick sit through the John Wick movies with me. Purely for research.”

Her mother snorted. “Is it too weird if I say I like to research Keanu Reeves, too?”

“Oh, good God,” Rick muttered, while the two women laughed. “Goodbye, Anne. She’ll see you in the morning before the press tour begins.”

“Bye, Anne. See you tomorrow.”

“Goodnight, Sam. Rick.”

Rick made one last turn around the building then headed north toward the apartment. “You know Keanu Reeves is twice your age.”

“Not in some of his movies, he’s not. He’s my age in the first Matrix movie. Ooh, we could watch those.”

“No, thank you. Old Keanu is quite enough.”

Samantha leaned over to kiss his shoulder. “If you grew your hair that long, I wouldn’t need to watch Keanu movies.”

That revved him up. “You are not making me jealous,” he stated as they stopped for a light, “but I am going to give you the sex all over that couch. Then we’ll see how much time you spend watching Keanu and his flowing mane.”

Laughing, she grabbed his chin and pulled his head around for a deep, tongue-tangling kiss. “We should probably send Andre and Wilder home and turn off the lights before we start watching, then. Because I want all the sex with you, Rick. All night long.”

Christ . He’d be lucky if they made it home first, now. He called Wilder and told him to give himself and Andre the rest of the night off, pushed his luck with two yellow lights on the way back, and practically skidded the car into the parking garage. “Come on,” he muttered, exiting the car and striding around to take her by the arm as she straightened.

The garage had cameras, as did the elevator and the little alcove outside their apartment. His jaw clenched, Richard kept hold of her hand, kept his eyes looking straight ahead, and ran numbers through his mind. Lots of numbers, with lots of decimals in them.

“You okay?” she muttered, as they ascended past the lobby and the first two floors.

“Shut up,” he managed.

He was fairly certain she was amused, but his goal was not to embarrass himself on camera. Damn tight jeans. She liked when he wore them, so this was her fault. Technically, it was all her fault, because she was so bloody attractive, and the way she moved was so self-assured and so sexy, that he wanted her all the time. Things like her teasing him or touching him or—fuck it all—smiling, made it worse. And now she was doing all three.

The elevator opened into their small foyer. He already had the keycard in his free hand, and luckily for the door it unlocked with his first swipe. Stepping inside with her, he shut the door and locked it. When Samantha lifted her arms around his neck, he held her off. “Andre? Wilder? Are you still here?”

Silence.

“I will take that as a no,” Samantha said. “And if either of them is here, in a minute somebody’s going to be too embarrassed to move a muscle. You hear that, Wilder? This is your last chance.”

Nothing.

“Andre?” he yelled, just to be sure.

Samantha shrugged. “I guess they listened to y—”

Richard took her face in his hands and kissed her, his tongue dancing with hers. Her backside bumped against the door, and using the fine mahogany for leverage, he shifted his hands to her T-shirt and pulled it up so he could slide his hands beneath her bra and brush his fingers across her nipples.

Lowering his mouth to the curve of her neck, his kissed the place where her pulse hammered. He loved that he excited her, that she wanted him as much as he wanted her. “Arms up,” he muttered, returning to her T-shirt.

“Arms up,” she repeated, complying as he pulled the shirt off over her head. “Tits out.”

Rick snorted. Technically they weren’t out yet, but he meant to see to that immediately, pulling the front of her bra down and lowering his head to take her breast in his mouth, flicking her nipple with his tongue.

Samantha gasped. “We aren’t going to get to John Wick tonight, are we?” she asked, shoving his shirt up and going for the button fastening his jeans.

“Nope.”

The curtains of the wall-sized window overlooking Hyde Park stood open, as they generally did, but the lights in the front room and the kitchen were out, and the nearer couch faced the interior of the house, anyway. Swinging her up in his arms, he carried her over to it and set her down on the deep cushions.

He finished pulling off his clothes and kicking his shoes out of the way, watching her as she did the same. Neither of them knew her birthday, but now, at least, he could ask Anne about it. When they’d first met she’d given her age as twenty-four, which would make her twenty-five now. He’d just turned thirty-four, which generally didn’t signify except for the fact that it made him aware that he needed to stay in shape if he meant to keep up with her, which he did.

Samantha ran, lifted weights, and went through assorted other exercises he knew were meant to aid her in climbing buildings and going through ducts and other Spider-Man activities—completely legitimate ones now, of course—which left her strong, flexible, and supremely sexy in anything she wore, or nothing at all.

“Whatcha doin’?” she panted, looking up at him with a grin on her oval face.

“I’m looking at you,” he said. “You take my breath away, Samantha. I adore you, you know.”

“Well, that’s a nice thing to say. Come here and I can promise you’re going to get lucky.”

“You don’t have to ask me twice, ma’am.”

“That’s ‘my lady,’ if you don’t mind.” Sitting up, Samantha wrapped her arms around his shoulders and pulled him onto the couch and on top of her.

“Not yet,” he pointed out, then forgot how to speak as one of her hands wrapped around his cock.

She pushed all his buttons, all the time, and he adored her for it. He felt revved up, like an engine, and she’d had her foot on the accelerator all evening. Slow and leisurely could wait for the second inning. And there he went, mixing his metaphors, but he didn’t much care.

Kissing her again, he settled between her knees and pushed forward, sliding into her, relishing in the tight, damp heat of her. With another throaty chuckle she wrapped arms and legs around him, moaning while he rocked into her again and again.

Samantha came first, and he followed, riding on the same wave of heat and desire and need. Jesus . His watch applauded him for his elevated heart rate and exercise regime, and he snorted, lowering his head against her shoulder.

“Your watch is going to explode,” she laughed breathily, taking his arm and unfastening the pesky thing to toss it on the coffee table. She’d already removed hers, of course. No sense letting some technician somewhere realize that Jellicoe and Addison were synched up and at it again.

“Dammit. I think I’m kneeling on a pen, too. I vote we adjourn to the bedroom.”

“No kidding. I’m imagining some paparazzo with an infrared camera recording us through the window right now.” She lifted her arms over her head and stretched, catlike, beneath him.

That did all sorts of very nice things to his nethers. Good on you, big fellow , he praised himself, and straightened to sink onto his haunches. “Well, now I’m imagining it, too.” Trying to pretend he wasn’t still out of breath, he stood and tugged her to her feet. “Come along, Jellicoe. That was barely the first inning. I’m going for a whole game tonight.”

Turning around, she planted her palms on his chest and sank against him, tilting her face up for a long, slow kiss that he felt all the way to his toes. “Just so you know, I adore you, too, Addison.”

“Hmm. Now I’m thinking double-header.”

“Have I mentioned how glad I am that you finally learned baseball terms, Brit?” She took his hand, twining her fingers with his, and pulled him into the master bedroom. “Batter up.”

* * *

Walter Barstone sat at his small kitchen table, set down his bowl of kit-made chicken Caesar salad and a fork, and reached over for the television remote. The doc had said more greenery and less meat, but this compromise was as close as he cared to get to vegetarian.

As always, he started with the world news, then went to the local eastern Florida channel. “No shit, it’s hot,” he muttered. “Bring on another hurricane, why don’t you? Come on, my azaleas need another foot-and-a-half of rain this week.”

Apparently, his azaleas would survive at least for the next ten days, as long as he kept the beach umbrella over them. Whatever the hell was going on with the weather, and whoever the hell had done it, he’d had just about enough of it.

Halfway through his salad the first local news story repeated, and he changed the channel again. This time of year was generally slow in Florida; the snow hadn’t started to chase the northern snowbirds south yet, and the only criminal stuff going on was shoplifting and the occasional money-laundering or B and E or bank robbery. A couple of years ago Sam would have been sitting there with him, and they would have been talking about spending the month in Europe because the film awards season was heating up. Yachts, jewelry, idiots who rented out entire hotel floors and then forgot to create the security that would keep a self-assured young lady who looked like she belonged on the red carpet from strolling in and nabbing all the sparkly things.

But Sam was in New York right now, protecting sparkly things, and he remained in hot-ass Florida. It was just wrong. Especially when on top of the weather he’d been asked to go to his sources—again—and use them to help Sam catch bad guys. Except he and Sam were bad guys. Or at least they had been. What the hell he was now, he had no idea, but it was giving him a migraine.

Even without Sam taking the contracts he offered her, requests from various people who wanted to own various things currently in someone else’s possession, he’d still managed to make a couple hundred thousand dollars this past year. Together with the cash he’d been carefully putting away for the past twenty-five years, it was more than enough to buy him a vineyard or a villa somewhere in the south of Europe where he could retire, sample wine, and eat baguettes in the sunset for the rest of his life.

In the original plan, he and Sam were going to be neighbors, toasting each other across some quaint donkey trail and hiring people to do all the housework and driving and shit while they enjoyed the fruits of their questionable labors. Maybe she’d kind of decided on an early retirement, or semi-retirement, about two years ago, but unique contracts had still interested her. The one she’d taken to rob Solano Dorado of an old stone tablet had proven that. And he would have been good with her going slower and being more cautious.

All that had changed, though, when Rick Addison had entered the picture. Walter couldn’t accuse him of ruining things, because Sam had never been happier, even with the huge damn risks she was taking now. Not just going straight, but going public. Getting her photo put in newspapers and magazines, and even worse, online.

Where did that all leave him, her Yoda, her daddy de facto, as she called him? Losing contacts, losing contracts, losing the trust of paranoid, scary people after he’d spent years building his secret little spider’s web for gathering information—that’s where it left him.

And sitting alone at his table eating a salad that had three tiny little chunks of chicken in it. Maybe he should just retire. He had some hobbies lined up, just waiting for him to have the time to try them out. He could even, if he was careful, get himself a nice place in New York, close to the city, even if he’d grown up there and didn’t feel any particular affection for it.

Sam, though, had finally made it clear where she stood, and that the two of them as things were now would not mesh. He got it, but that also meant that if he wanted to stay in her life, he needed to give up the life just like she had. And he didn’t have a rich, powerful British aristocrat to run interference for him.

Maybe, though, it was all shit, and she would stay on in Florida. Then he could keep playing both sides for at least a little longer and give himself time to figure out a revised rest-of-his-life scenario.

He glanced up at his sliding eyes cat clock. Time for Jeopardy , which meant his overseas phone calls would be starting in about half an hour. Nobody called him during Jeopardy . Not more than once, anyway. Picking up the remote, he turned the channel again and went to get the beer he’d forgotten.

His phone rang.

Swearing, he picked up the call, number unknown. He had a lot of calls from unknown numbers, though. “Do not, and I repeat, do not , call me during Jeopardy ,” he snapped, and tapped off the call. This was one of those times he missed the old-timey phones where you could slam the receiver down on the base with that satisfying thunk.

Walter took a swallow of beer and went back to his salad. Watching Jeopardy used to be another tradition with Sam, except that with her memory she knew most of the damn answers—despite her having a very minimal formal education. Sometimes he wondered what she would have done with her life if she hadn’t had a dad who dragged her around the world and never stayed in one place for more than a month. Thank God Martin had taken to dropping her off in Florida when he had a solo job.

His phone rang again. The same unknown number. That was just asking for it. “Lose my number,” he growled, picking up the cellphone and scowling. “Never call it again. If you do, I will hunt you down.”

“Stoney,” a voice said, low and mild. “Needed to catch you at home. And you’re always home for Jeopardy .”

Picking up the remote with his free hand, Walter broke his cardinal rule and hit the pause button. “Martin,” he said, inwardly swearing. “It’s been a long time.”

“It has,” Martin Jellicoe agreed. “I thought maybe you’d retired, what with your top two earners gone.”

“Oh, you know how it is. There’re always more guys out there who think they’re Cary Grant. So, what can I do for you?”

“Well, to start with, Stoney, you can stop ratting out contacts to the British guy. And don’t lie to me about it, either. There’s nobody else in the damn world who could narrow the globe down to one guy in Amsterdam as fast as you managed it.”

That would be Daan Van der Berg. Of course Addison would have called the guy and threatened him, even after their chat about confidentiality and rumors. Shit . “I’m not apologizing,” he said aloud. “You’re going up against Sam, when she’s just trying to live her life. I don’t know how to tell you, Martin, but you ain’t Cary Grant any more, either.”

“If I’m no match for her, why help her out? Why stack the deck against your oldest friend?”

“You’re missing the point, Martin. Sam’s making a go of the straight life. Leave her alone. Dads aren’t supposed to make things harder on their own kids.”

“Maybe you’re missing the point,” Martin retorted. “Firstly that letting her give up the life was a mistake, and secondly that she only went into the security business because of me. Everything she’s doing is to try to beat me. I’m just making sure she knows she can’t.”

Walter shook his head. Always self-centered and with an elephant-sized ego, Martin wasn’t going to be one of those guys who got smarter and wiser with age. Just more desperate to prove he wasn’t losing a step. And trying to demonstrate that to the one person who definitely was going to notice differences between in-his-prime Martin and today Martin.

“I’m assuming Van der Berg canceled his order,” he said aloud. “You don’t have any reason to try to get into that exhibit now. Just leave it, Martin.”

“You probably tell her she’s better than I am, don’t you?”

“She was. She’s not doing that shit anymore.”

“If she’s leaving the business, she needs to leave it. Not just work parallel to it and call it good deeds. No, this isn’t about filling an order, Stoney. This is about teaching Sam a lesson. She’s never going to beat me, so if she wants out of this life she can go teach piano lessons or be a librarian. Every time she tries to wall me off from my profession, I’m going to jump her fence. You get me?”

“And if you’re wrong and Addison uses his weight to get you put back in the slam?”

Martin snorted. “Then the first thing I’ll do is give Sam all the credit she deserves for all the hard work she’s done. Hell, I’m a generous soul. I’ll even give her credit for some of my work. That’s what dads do, right?”

“No. No, it isn’t. At all. You—”

“Tell her what I said. You tell her everything anyway, don’t you? See you around, Stoney. The where and how and when is up to you.”

The line went silent. Walter waited for a beat, then set the phone back on the table. No mention of Anne or the mother-daughter reunion stunt Sam had figured Martin would be pulling, and that made it more likely. Back in the day he and Martin Jellicoe had been friends. They’d shared a lifestyle and a penchant for enjoying getting hold of some really valuable things, if only as the middlemen.

When Sam had appeared in Martin’s company the dynamic had changed, and he’d ultimately been relieved when the news had gotten out that Martin had died in prison. It had made things easier. Things like Sam taking a legit job as an art restorer, for one. And it had changed him , probably more than he’d realized. Martin might be her biological father, but having her in his life had made Walter feel like a dad.

Today she’d asked him to walk her down the aisle, for Christ’s sake. And he was supposed to sit there and let Martin mess up her life again? Fuck that.

He lifted the phone again and opened one of the apps. Being careful, thinking ten steps ahead of where he was, had helped make him wealthy and had kept him out of prison. Sometimes, though, the steps had to change without any warning. And sometimes, taking a risk was worth it. Or at least he damn well hoped so.

In five minutes he had a flight booked to New York. Then he shut off his television and went to retrieve his emergency travel bag. Both Jellicoes were unstoppable forces and immovable objects, and if he was going to get in between them, he was going to do it with his eyes wide open, an escape plan in place, and all his fingers crossed. Jeopardy would have to wait. He was about to get in some for real.