The Sapphire Affair (A Jewel Novel Book 1) (4 page)

“Always start at a bar,” he quipped.

“You might meet a pretty woman in a bikini there, too,” she said, wiggling her eyebrows. Typical Kate—she wanted to play matchmaker for him. A nudge here, a push there, and she was sure she’d have Jake at the altar. Not likely.

He scoffed. “Not going to the Caymans to pick up women at bars.”

“Then maybe the beach,” Kate added, egging him on.

“Not there, either.”

“You need to check out his club, too. See if there’s a connection between the money, the art, and the club. And”—she mimed dancing—“maybe you’ll do a little dirty dancing with a nice island gal.”

“Get out of here. Work and women don’t mix and you know that,” he said, and there was a damn good reason for that golden rule. He’d made the foolish mistake a few years ago of getting involved on a job with a stunning brunette named Rosalinda with a penchant for high heels. He’d been on the trail of a stolen Medici artifact in Venice that had been lifted in a larger heist. She was on the hunt for a different piece of the collection, so they’d joined forces, formed an ad hoc business partnership on one of the biggest gigs he’d ever had—it spanned months, and cities, and many hotel bedrooms where they’d spent their nights together.

Until the day he finally got his hands on the artifact, and she stole it from under his nose that evening. His jaw clenched as he remembered the way it felt to have been played like that. Turned out she’d been working with some big criminal syndicate that was trying to steal the entire collection. Good thing he was smarter and faster than she was, and he’d learned her habits and weaknesses. He’d managed to catch up to her in a shoe boutique, of all places, and steal it back on behalf of his clients, the rightful owners.

Taught him a damn good lesson, though.

Don’t get involved on a job. There was too much on the line.

His livelihood. His family’s well-being. He took care of all of the Harlowes through this job, and no woman was worth that risk.

Especially a backstabbing thief of a woman.

These days, his focus was work and only work. That’s exactly what he intended to do in the Caymans. Nothing would get in his way.

CHAPTER FOUR

Ah, dive bars were the best.

Pink Pelican rocked that vibe like nobody’s business. He could picture this spot fitting in perfectly in Key Largo. Hell, he could practically be in the Keys right now. The wood walls were lined with seashells. Jack Johnson played from a stereo system. A dartboard hung on a wall at the far side of the joint. The whole place smelled of beer.

Translation: heaven.

Add in the talkative Marie, and this stop had been nothing but good news. The bartender with a long mess of brown hair braided tightly was friendly and chatty. With a few well-placed questions that didn’t give him away, he learned some key details about the nightclub at the end of the block—info that couldn’t be gleaned online. Jake would visit it later when the moon rose high in the sky and see if he could get a bead on whether Eli was hiding his art there. Hell, the guy might have turned the art into cash already and fed those greenbacks into the club.

Either way, he couldn’t sniff around now at five in the evening. Stopping by a club at this early-bird hour would make him stick out like a sore thumb, so it was break time. Blending in was essential on a job like this on a small island, and Jake did his best to look like a man on vacation in the Caymans. He’d contemplated playing the part of the finance man, but he didn’t seem like a guy who worked in the shade. He was a man who worked in the sun, so he’d decided on the easiest cover-up of all—one that could be true. He was thirty-year-old Jake Harlowe, former soldier, now in the “recovery” business, and here on a fishing trip with his buddies. Marie was an avid fisherwoman, so they’d exchanged tales of the ones they’d caught and the ones that had gotten away.

“Tomorrow should be a great day on the water,” Marie said as she wiped the counter. “I bet you’ll have a fantastic haul. Marlins and groupers galore.”

“Excellent. That’s what I want to hear.”

“What else will you do while in town? Snorkel trip? Dive? Stingray kiss?”

He arched an eyebrow at the last one but quickly answered her, resting his elbows on the bar. “Let me tell you something. I’ve always wanted some island art. Gonna just come right out and admit it,” he said, as if he were confessing, even though he was clearly teasing. “It’s kinda like a thing of mine. Some painting of a fish jumping out of the water,” he said, gesturing to the right, to indicate the art gallery run by Eli’s new woman. He’d wandered past it earlier and gotten an eyeful of unframed canvases of angles, squares, and trapezoids in a showing of modern geometric art by an artist name Lynx. Yup. One of those one-name-only artistic types. A bunch of the frames had
S
OLD
signs on them with a price tag of either $5,000 or $10,000. Too hard to tell from his quick visit if any of those canvases were the ones Eli had ferried out of the United States or, frankly, if said art would even be hanging on the wall at a gallery. But he wanted a local’s opinion on the gallery, and no one was more local than a bartender. “Is that what I can get a few doors down?”

She whipped her head back and forth. “No way. You find that kind of stuff at cheap little tourist shops—” She clasped her hand on her mouth. Her brown eyes widened in embarrassment. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for it to seem like I’m saying bad things about tourists.”

Jake laughed and reassured her. “You’re all good. You’ll have to work pretty hard to offend me.”

She wiped her hand across her brow. “Phew. I’m always just saying whatever comes to mind,” she said, then dropped her voice to a whisper, since the bar was starting to fill up with other customers. “Not always the best trait for a bartender. Anyway, that gallery is more for fancier things.”

Privately, he wondered precisely how fancy. Like $10 million fancy.

“Like my Renoir?” he asked drily.

She shot him a curious stare. “You better be joking. You don’t really have a Renoir, do you?”

“Maybe I do. He was famous for his fishing scenes, right?”

Marie picked up the baton easily. “I believe the Louvre has some of those, don’t they? Anyway, the gallery sells some fancy stuff, but nothing on that level. If you decide you want to turn that Renoir into diamonds instead, we’ve got plenty of shops for that, too.”

“You’ve got a big diamond business on the Islands, right?”

“That we do. The great thing is when you buy one in the Caymans, it’s tax-free. Business here is booming. All along the main street, and even the little shops on the side streets near the banks. Down on Wayboard Street—those guys have the best deals,” she said, washing some glasses.

“So Wayboard Street is where I should go after I sell my Renoir to the lady next door?” he said with a wink.

“Absolutely,” she said, pointing far off in the distance, as if to show him the street. “You pass this swank restaurant Tristan’s, take a right, take your next right, and”—she stopped to issue a dramatic pause, fluttering her fingers like she was onstage—“and prepare to be dazzled.”

He laughed and filed that data in the mental banks.

A group of new customers walked in, so Marie scurried to the tables, and Jake took out his phone and entered some notes. He finished his beer, tossed some bills on the bar, then some extra for Marie. That woman was a gold mine so far.

When he stood up to leave, he spotted a dartboard on the wall. Satisfied with his work so far today, he ambled over to it, picked up a few darts, then backed up several feet. Narrowing his eyes as if zeroing in on a target, he mimed tossing the dart once, twice, then a third time.

“You’re shooting too high. You’ll miss.”

As he let the dart fly, his brain registered adjectives.

Sexy. Pretty. American.

He turned his head in the direction of the voice and . . . holy smokes. His assessment needed to be revised.

She was . . . beautiful.

Dark-blonde hair. Killer body. Legs a mile long and sculpted to toned perfection. Standing at the bar, knocking back a glass of whiskey. Totally at ease in her element.

He snapped his gaze to the dartboard. The dart was nowhere to be seen on the board. He’d missed by a mile, as predicted. The effect of a gorgeous woman. He turned his focus to her. “Seems I’m in need of a dart coach,” he said, quirking up the corner of his lips, his acknowledgment that she’d bested him.

Setting her glass on the corner of the bar, she strolled past him and bent down.

Don’t stare down her shirt. Stop gawking at that ass. Look away from the most perfect pair of legs you’ve ever seen.

As she plucked the dart from the ground, he tried to follow his own orders. He really tried. But he was failing on all accounts. Especially when her short little tank rode up and he caught sight of a sexy-as-sin belly button piercing.

Ah hell.
That was just too tempting.

He drew a quick breath, as if that would settle the blast of lust threatening to camp out in his body right now. As she stood, she flashed him a bright smile, the kind that only an all-American girl could pull off. She looked that way, too—athletic, blue-eyed, and fresh-faced. Her hair was piled high on her head in some sort of ponytail contraption.

She handed him the dart. “I’ll see if I have any openings in my schedule, Tommy,” she said, roaming her eyes over his Tommy Bahama shirt. Another attempt to fit in. This shirt was so not his style.

He returned the favor, taking his time scanning her shirt with its smiling turtle illustration in the center. “Ah, so I was right. You’re Happy Turtle, the dart coach, correct?” He tilted his head to the side in question, and she laughed lightly as he bestowed a shirt-derived name on her, too.

She lifted her chin. “If you hit a bull’s-eye, I’ll give you your first dart lesson free, Tommy.”

“Can’t back down from that kind of offer.”

She leaned against the bar and took a drink as she eyed the board. She gestured to it, as if to say,
“Go ahead—impress me.”

Jake was no dart pro, but he’d spent enough time in bars and enough time with men killing time that he knew what he was doing. He’d only missed the first shot because of her. Now he’d need to land it because of her.

Instinct kicked in. The instinct that told a man to impress a pretty woman. Such a simple force, but a driving one for nearly any red-blooded male. He raised his arm, took aim, and let the dart fly. Straight down the middle. Landing the shot.

She cheered. Thrust her arms high above her head and hooted and hollered. “Admit it,” she said, shaking a finger at him and narrowing her eyes. “You’re a dart ringer. You’ve been sent by the National Federation of Dart Experts to infiltrate island bars and impress women with your dart skills.”

“I’ve impressed you, then?” he asked, wanting to pump a fist and cheer at having accomplished his goal. Man, some days he was so damn simple.
See pretty woman; impress pretty woman.

“You have indeed.”

“Take your turn, then. Let’s see how you do,” he said, inviting her with a sweep of his arm.

She parked one hand on her hip. “You doubt me,” she said with a curve of her lips.
Mmmm, those lips . . .
 He shouldn’t stare at them, either, but looking away from a pretty little mouth like that was cause for turning in your man card. He liked keeping his man card. And he liked entertaining images of those lips and how they’d taste and feel.

He shrugged as if to say,
“Bring it on.”

“Oh, you do! You totally doubt me. You think I marched in here, gave you orders, and can’t back them up.”

“Then show me, Happy Turtle,” he said, ready to keep this flirty banter going on for however long it could last. As he egged her on, a realization smacked him hard—it had been a damn long time since he’d had this kind of a casual, random flirtation with a stranger. Maybe work and women didn’t mix, but bars and beautiful women might be a perfect combination.

She took the dart from his hand slowly, making sure to brush her finger along his, or so it seemed. And hell, that slightest bit of contact tripped a switch in him. The switch that said more contact would be a fine way to spend the evening, thank you very much.

Matters south of the border started rising up.

Down, boy.

The woman never broke contact with his gaze as she stepped away. His brain didn’t issue any orders to look elsewhere this time. She was inviting him to stare, and he did unabashedly, drinking her in, his analytical mind adding up details both practical and physical. The fact that she was here in a bar alone told him she was either an alcoholic or a local. The deep tan said local was more likely, and the bikini top, covered up by the tank and surf shorts, suggested she was a beach bum or simply part of the tourist industry. The toned legs and firm arms said she wasn’t afraid to break a sweat.

He could think of plenty of ways to get sweaty with her.

She broke the eye contact, raised her arm, steadied her stance, and tossed. Right down the center.

“Holy shit,” he said with a low whistle of appreciation.

She shrugged playfully and blew on her nails.
Too hot to handle.
“My stepdad taught me,” she said, and something dark passed in those blue eyes when she said that, but it disappeared just as quickly as it came.

“He taught you well. But can you repeat?”

“Oh, ye of little faith,” she said, taunting him as she jutted out her chin. She proceeded to demonstrate her dart prowess, landing shot after shot, and schooling him in the barroom game.

When the match ended and Jake was thoroughly demolished, he extended a hand. “Congratulations. You are officially a goddess of darts and I am humbly destroyed.”

“I’ve always wanted to be a destructive goddess.”

“By the way, real name’s Jake.”

“Mine’s Ariel,” she said.

He quirked his eyebrows together. “Like the mermaid?”

She nodded, her blue eyes lighting up. “Very good.”

“Most men don’t get the reference when you give them your fake bar name for strangers?”

Her eyes widened, nearly popping out of her head. Her mouth fell open. “Wait. You knew my name wasn’t really Happy Turtle?”

He laughed, but he wasn’t bothered by the fake name or the way she teased. “It’s OK,
Ariel
. One, I have two sisters, so I know who Ariel is. Two, I have two sisters, so I know about fake bar names. Three, is your best friend a starfish?”

She leaned in closer, and he caught a faint whiff of her shampoo—smelled like coconuts. Perfect scent for an island woman. “I do that, too,” she whispered.

“Do what?” he asked, furrowing his brow.

“That whole one, two, three thing.”

“You count?” He pretended to sound shocked. He slapped a palm against the bar. “Then we absolutely, positively must meet up later for another drink,” he said, and though the offer was made playfully, he fully meant it.

She shoved his shoulder. Oh, she was feisty. He liked that. “Listing numbers and answers—that’s what I meant by the counting thing. And why do you ask if my best friend is a starfish?”

“One, you can do that again,” he said, rubbing his shoulder. “I really enjoy getting smacked in the shoulder.” She pretended to pout. “No, honestly. I do. It’s this weird thing of mine. I completely crave shoulder punches,” he said, in an intensely serious tone that made her curve up the corner of her lips and nudge his shoulder again, lightly this time. “Two, I knew what you meant by the counting thing. Three, I asked because I saw you have a starfish on your belly button, and it’s ridiculously sexy.”