Playing Dirty (24 page)

He stopped dead. “No.”

FucknofucknofucknofuckNO!

He executed a sharp, military-worthy left face and strode over to the wall.

He didn’t, however, have to be close to see the fucking hole in it.
His
fucking hole, the one that
he
was supposed to have found!

How the hell had they? He peered inside and found it empty.

And the suave manner that had gotten him into dozens of women’s bank accounts dissolved; his ability to think on the fly died a cold, bleak death. All that was left was a screaming sense of unfairness and a raging white-hot temper. Whirling on one heel, he whipped his gun from its holster as he stalked over to the inner doorway.

Where he stopped, one foot inside the bedroom. There were
four
women, not just the two he’d expected.

Four. Women.

And every last one of them had a fortune in diamonds adorning them.

His
diamonds, dammit. He’d been busting his hump for those babies and damned if he planned to leave here without them. He pointed his gun at Ava, who stopped dancing, took one look at him…and screamed.

The other women looked at her, looked at him—and his gun—and screamed along with her.

Christ!
The strip-the-paint-off-a-Caddie screeching was so piercing they were damn lucky he didn’t start shooting up the joint. It wasn’t like he’d had this damn gun long enough to get used to it himself.
“Shut up!”
he roared.

Mercifully, they did.

“Hoo!” Ava slapped a hand against her tits, which continued to shift gently even though the rest of her had stilled. The woman had some seriously fine jiggle.

He gave himself a mental head slap.
That is so not the point.

“You scared the crap out of me,” she said. But she gave him an apologetic smile. “I’m sorry. Did you think we were burglars?”

It’s a good excuse—grab it and finesse the situation.
Hell, maybe he could get them to give him the diamonds for safekeeping. Opening his mouth to do exactly that, he instead heard himself demand, “Hand over the necklace.”

Shit!
Even beyond his runaway mouth, something bothered him, tried to tell him…he didn’t know what. So, he shrugged it aside and gestured impatiently with the gun.

But Ava didn’t hurry to remove that gorgeous blinder of a necklace. She simply blinked big, green eyes at him. “Excuse me?”

“Take off the necklace and fork it over.”

“You’re
stealing
it?”

“Liberating it,” he corrected. Jesus. He wasn’t a common thief.

“No, Ava’s right,” Beks said, and he half turned to look at her. “It would be stealing. Liberating is more along the lines of Che Guevara.”

“Do you think so?” a brunette on the other side of the room demanded skeptically. “I mean, Che had good intentions, but that world revolution thing was a little extreme—I’d consider him more of an insurgent. If you’re talking liberators, I’d think more along the lines of Simón Bolivar and José de San Martin.”

“I have to go with Janie on this,” the blonde behind him said. “Of the three of us, she was by far the best student.”

“Shut up!”
he bellowed again. Christ. He was getting a headache. Usually, it was just this kind of shit that he liked about women—the fact that they couldn’t hold a fricking thought for more than ten seconds running.

The real question was, though, why couldn’t
he?
He could
always
think—his faster-than-a-speeding-bullet, think-on-his-feet mind was his number-one asset.

But from the instant he’d clapped eyes on that empty secret compartment in the other room, it seemed to have shut down on him.

“Yes, we got a little off topic,” Ava agreed gently, and he turned back to look at her again. “The point is, you’re supposed to be guarding the joint. Not ripping it off.”

“Things change. Gimme the necklace.”

“I will if you’ll just put the gun down. You’re making me very nervous, Tony, waving it around that way.”

“That’s the
point,
lady! I make you nervous, you give me what I want and I leave you to breathe another day.”

“I don’t think you really want to shoot us, though, do you?” the blonde asked, and he turned back once again.

“Of course I don’t wanna shoot you. Doesn’t mean I won’t, if I have to.”

But the logistics were all wrong—the damn women were spread around the entire goddamn room.

Shit. That
was what had nagged at him. Even if he wanted to, he couldn’t shoot them all at once. And it wasn’t as if he was an ace shot even at close range.

But they didn’t know that. Hell, most women knew bupkus about guns. And, banking on their ignorance,
he brandished his weapon at the brunette. Thank God. The brain was back in action.

“Give me the earrings,” he said to the brunette. “And you, blondie—” he turned to look at her “—I’ll take those diamonds in your hair.”

The pretty blonde heaved a sigh. “Oh, very well. Just…point the gun at the ceiling, okay? I don’t want it accidentally going off when I’m doing my best to cooperate.”

He didn’t see the harm in that. “Fine.” Pointing it at the ceiling, he sent her an impatient look. “Happy? Now take the damn things off.”

“I am. See? They’re just a little tangled.”

He watched with avid eyes as she worked the gems out of her wildly curling hair and approached him cautiously. “That’s far enough,” he said when she was an arm’s reach away.

Obediently, she stopped. “Here you go,” she said softly. “As promised.” She extended her hand, the diamonds in her palm glittering under the overhead light.

Mesmerized, he reached to take them.

And felt his head explode in agony.

“O
H
, G
OD
, oh, God, did I
kill
him?” The half-full magnum Ava had used to coldcock Tony dropped from fingers gone numb. Wine slopped out of the bottle’s neck in slow, sluggish glugs and soaked into the rug, but she barely noticed. When she had seen how focused the guard was on getting the hair clips from Poppy, it had seemed like a good idea to take advantage of his preoccupation. Now all she could think was,
I killed a man. Why did it seem so important that I not tell Cade I love him? I
killed
a man!

And her breath quit penetrating deeper than the upper lobes of her lungs.

Jane rushed over, pausing only long enough to nudge the gun away from where it had fallen when Tony had collapsed, facedown, on the rug. She pushed it deeper beneath a nearby chair with the toe of her ankle boot. An instant later she was in front of Ava.

Who stared at her and wheezed, “Can’t. Breathe.”

“You’re hyperventilating,” her friend said in a voice both sympathetic and brisk. “Cup your hands over your mouth and nose and focus on your breaths.” Jane rubbed gentle circles in Ava’s shoulders as she spoke. “In and
out, real slow. Yes, like that. I know how you feel, Av—you know I do, because I’ve been there. But I don’t think the guard guy is dead, so just take nice, slow breaths.”

“Janie’s right,” Poppy agreed. “Look at his back—he’s breathing. You just knocked him out.” Stooping, she pressed two fingers to the downed man’s carotid, then looked up at Ava. “He’s got a strong pulse. But we should probably tie him up before he comes to.” She looked over at Beks. “Do you think you could you find something? I gotta call Jas—”

“Freeze!”
a deep male voice roared, making all of them jump and Beks and Jane scream. It scared a sharp inhale out of Ava, the upside of which was that she could suddenly breathe again.

A man burst through the doorway, sweeping a gun from side to side to cover the room.

Poppy recognized him first. “Jason! Oh, God, I’m glad to see you! But, please, could you lower—” She nodded as her husband, whose gaze had taken in the unconscious, unarmed Tony, immediately holstered his gun. “Thank you,” she said fervently. “I’ve had about all I can take of having a weapon pointed at me tonight.”

“I was afraid I might find you here,” Jason said, then his eyes narrowed dangerously. “He pointed a gun at you?” It only took him a second to cross over to Tony, bend down, jerk the man’s hands behind his back and snap cuffs none-too-gently around his wrists. Then, rising to his feet, he hauled Poppy into his arms. “Are you okay?” he demanded, looking down at her. “And the baby?”

Watching her friend return her husband’s tight hug and murmur assurances against his chest, Ava thought,
I want that.
So intent was she on the picture they made
and her own intense longing, in fact, that it took her a moment to notice the man who’d entered in Jase’s wake.

The man striding straight for
her
.

“Cade!” She flew to meet him, throwing herself into his arms. They wrapped around her so tightly it all but knocked the breath she had just regained back out of her.

Nothing in her life had ever felt better. Or more right.

Tucking in his chin, he looked down at her. “You all right?”

“Now that you’re here, I am. I’m so sorry about last night.”

“Don’t worry about it.” He gave her hair a rough stroke from crown to nape, then tore his gaze away to look over at his PA. “How about you, Beks?”

The younger woman nodded, her multicolored hair aquiver with the motion. “I’m okay. But I’m sure glad it’s over.”

“Oh, man, me, too,” Ava ardently concurred and found his bluer than blue eyes locked back on hers. Her brow furrowed. “How did you manage to arrive at the same time as Jase?”

“My gut didn’t like that you two were alone in this big place with a fortune in diamonds and when I debated between calling Jason or the night guy to check in on you, a burglary cop just seemed the better bet. Good thing, I’d say,” he added grimly. “What happened?”

All four women burst into a cacophony of explanations until Jason said,
“Enough,”
with the cop authority he wielded so well. “Jane.” He pointed a long, dark finger at the brunette. “You’re usually the more concise one in the sisterhood—”

“Well, I like that!” Poppy protested, but subsided be
neath the you-don’t-even-want-to-mess-with-me look her husband bent on her.

He turned back to Jane. “What happened?”

She told him, concisely.

Tony started coming around, and time kicked into warp speed for Ava, whizzing by in a blur as Jason called someone in his unit to collect the erstwhile night guard. When a patrol cop showed up, he instructed her to run Phillips’s prints through IAFIS.

“This might be a crime of opportunity, but let’s see what turns up,” he said, and as soon as the officer left, he turned to the four women to take statements.

Sometime during that, Jane called Devlin, who must have broken every speed limit between Belltown and the mansion to get there as quickly as he did.

“You can’t sell this fucking place fast enough to suit me,” he growled as he stalked into the room, dark red hair gleaming under the overheads, black brows gathered over the thrust of his nose. “Since Miss Agnes died, it’s been nothing but dangerous for you three.”

That wasn’t a hundred percent true, but it had been for Jane last year and had sure as hell been tonight. So Ava had no desire to argue and noticed that neither Poppy nor Jane refuted him either.

At one point the women recalled they were still wearing the Wolcott jewelry, removed it and restored the pieces to their boxes. Jane locked them in the secret closet in Miss Agnes’s bedroom. Then she and Dev took off.

Jase gathered up Poppy soon after and told Beks he’d give her a ride.

And suddenly just Ava and Cade were left.

C
ADE TOOK
Ava’s hand and led her over to Miss A’s bed. Sitting on its side, he tugged her onto his lap. “I
love you,” he said, looking at her flushed cheeks, bright mussed hair and gorgeous eyes. “I’m not trying to pressure you into saying it back, but after a day like this, I just need to put it out there—”

She clapped a hand over his mouth, cutting him off, and he damn near howled. He wished he could force her to love him back, but he’d promised himself he’d give her the time and space to make her own decisions—and he had to stick to that. So he met her gaze and held his peace.

“When you broke my heart in high school I vowed hell would freeze over before I forgave you,” she said, smooth palm still pressed to his lips. Then her lips crooked in a one-sided smile. “But that was a long time ago, Cade, and you’ve not only explained your reasons but have proven over and over that you’ve grown worlds beyond an ancient, much-regretted bet.”

Removing her hand from his mouth, she swiveled in his lap, hiked her skirt up to the danger zone to straddle his thighs and leaned in to give him a soft-lipped kiss.

When she lifted her mouth from his, he looked up into lambent eyes, and his heartbeat sped up at what he saw shining in their green depths.

“When Tony was waving that gun around,” she said softly, “all I could think was, ‘I want Cade. Where is Cade?’ I needed you.”

“You did?” Jesus. Three simple words, and his heart was a fucking kettledrum.

“I needed you desperately. When I hit him with the champagne bottle, I really thought for a minute I’d killed him.” Staring into his eyes, she drew in an unsteady breath. Softly exhaled it. “Believing you’ve done something like that, something with consequences
you can’t reverse no matter how much you may wish to—well, it puts things in perspective in a red-hot hurry.

“So, you are
not
pressuring me to say it back when you tell me you love me. And you’re dead right that after a day like today we have to say what’s in our hearts. What is in mine is the same thing in yours. I love you, Cade. I was afraid to admit it, even to myself, but I understand now that that’s just dumb. We’ve been striking sparks off each other for what feels like forever—and that can be exciting. But so many times they were for the wrong reasons and I want more than that.”

“I do, too,” he agreed. “Don’t get me wrong, I don’t plan on giving up the sparks we generate. But you have a joy that knocks me on my butt—and I just want to roll in it, to wrap it around me like a blanket. I want the kindness that made you go get Stan Tarrof and bring him back to the mansion so he wouldn’t be alone. And I want the quiet times, the day-to-day stuff that makes up a relationship. Or what I imagine makes one up, anyhow. I can’t say that I’ve had anything close to what I envision having with you.”

“Me, either. I’ve spent way too much time protecting my heart and damn little opening it up to anyone but my closest friends.”

He grinned at her. “And may I say that I sorta dig that?”

“Oh.” She gave him a look of mock outrage. “You selfish bastard. You’re happy I was
alone?
” She slapped a hand to the swell of one gorgeous breast. Gave him a pathetic look. “Alone and
lonely?
”

He raised an eyebrow. “You might wanna work on those acting skills—that was a little overwrought. And, no—I’ll never be happy at the idea of you unhappy for
any reason. But I am pleased that you saved the real deal for me. I sure as hell saved mine for you.”

“Yet I would have been much more magnanimous about it if you hadn’t.”

He laughed in her face. “Bullshit.”

“Maybe.” She grinned back at him. “I’m so happy, Cade. I can’t imagine being able to sustain a feeling this great. I hope we don’t screw it up.”

“We won’t.”

“You know we’re gonna fight sometimes.”

“Yeah, hard not to when a reasonable guy is faced with a bullheaded, emotional woman.”

“I like
that!
” she said indignantly, but her lips quirked up at the pleased-with-himself smile he couldn’t contain.

He wrapped his hands around her hips. “Okay, we’re both a little too bullheaded for our own good at times. But, baby, we’ve got a whole shipload of love and
respect
for each other. And neither of us is afraid of hard work.”

She lit up. “We aren’t, are we? So we just have to put the same work into us that we do into our careers. And to that end—” She drew in an audible breath. “I’ll move to California with you. It might take me a while to build up a list of contacts, but give me time and I can do it.”

It was as if someone had reached inside his chest, wrapped a fist around his heart and squeezed. He knew how much she loved it here, how close she was to her friends, how fierce was her pride in the career she had built with her own two hands. But she was willing to sacrifice it all…for him.

“Jesus,” he breathed. “You are everything I ever wanted, even if I was too damn dumb to realize it for
a while. You’re sweet and special and you just rock my world.” He kissed her, hot and deep.

Raising his head, he gripped hers between his hands and stared down at her. “But I can’t let you move to L.A.”

“Yes, you can. I want to.”

“No, you don’t. But it just humbles the shit out of me that you offered anyway. You’ve got everything we both need right here—family, friends who are even more of a family and a real home, not just a place to hang your hat like my condo. Travel is pretty much the nature of my work anyhow, so my base isn’t that important. I’d love it if you’d accompany me to the occasional events I attend in Hollywood, but I’m not letting you uproot your entire life for me.” He looked at her, all flushed and tousled on his lap. “Besides, look at you. Move you to Hollywood and you’d have men trailing after you with their damn tongues hanging out, every time you stepped outside the door. I’m definitely keeping you outta Tinsel Town as much as possible.”

A huge smile lit up her face. “I don’t think any man looks at me the way you do. And I
know
no one else makes me feel the way you do.” Eyes alight, fingers splayed over her chest, she looked down at him. “I’m not sure my heart’s big enough to contain everything I feel.”

He kissed her again, then lifted her off his lap and onto her feet. Gave that sweet ass a light slap. “Whataya say we get out of here? Let’s go to your place and get naked in front of the fireplace.”

“Sounds good to me. Oh! Has it sunk in yet what the discovery of the Wolcott Suite will mean to your documentary?”

“Isn’t that
sweet?
” He laughed. “It’s like hitting the
daily double. Not only are we going to live the hottest love story since…I can’t think who, since all the famous lovers seem to wind up either dead or alone…but I think Miss A’s story has a real shot at going big.”

Looping her arms around his neck, she gave him a quick smooch. “Doesn’t get much better than that.”