Don't Look Down (3 page)

Samantha cleared her throat. “It’s apparently a pretty hot property.”

“Have Walter tell them I’m interested. They’ll wait.”

A furrow dipped between her fine eyebrows. “You’re not interested. I am.”

“Same thing. Come on, let’s—”

“It is not the same thing, Rick. For the last damned time this is my deal, okay?”

“I know that,” he returned, wondering whether he was facing her independent streak, which was what had first attracted him to her, or her equally wide stubborn streak,
which on occasion annoyed the hell out of him. “Someone as enterprising as you, though, might consider that I set up companies and make them profitable for a living—and that I’m rather successful at it. Furthermore, I have no objection to your making use of my experience, or my resources.”

Samantha narrowed her eyes. “You have no objection?” she repeated.

Uh-oh
. “I’m happy to offer my assistance,” he revised, inwardly swearing at himself. She wasn’t a leveraged buyout, and she wasn’t a bloody employee. “I’d like to help,” he tried again.

“I don’t think you’re offering help,” she said stiffly. “You want to do it. Set up an international security firm, line up the clients you think would get the business going profitably and with minimum hassle. But I am not opening a satellite office of Addisco. This is my idea, my project, my shot. And
I
have to do it. By myself.”

“Except for Walter, you mean. He gets to be included. It’s an office—not a Picasso you can steal and fence.”

“Oh, gee, thanks for clarifying that.”

“My point is, you and Walter have experience at something that doesn’t lend itself to establishing a legitimate business. I specialize in business, and it would be stupid not to take advantage of that fact.”

“So now I’m being stupid? Why, because I want to do something without you, right? You know, Rick, I’ve made a fucking ton of money without your help—and without
my
help, you would have died three months ago.”

He scowled. “What the hell does that have to do with setting up a business?”

The biting retort Samantha conjured came out of her chest as a frustrated growl. She’d tried to explain, numerous times, and he refused to listen. “I get it, you know. You want me to
be obligated to you, and you want to be able to remind me endlessly that
you
were the reason I was able to succeed. That’s not how I do business, legal or otherwise. So you can go to hell.”

“If you try this on your own, I would imagine you’ll get there first.”

“Oh, that’s enough of that, asshole,” she snapped, turning on her heel and striding toward their private rooms. Or rather,
his
private rooms, which she shared. Buckingham damned Palace was smaller than this place.

“What does that mean?” he demanded, stomping after her.

“I’m going to Florida.”

“In a week you’re going to Florida.”

“Ha!”
He still didn’t get it
. “Think you can keep me here, rich guy?”

“It’s for your own good. If you’d stop and use your brain instead of your bloody ego for a damned minute, you’d realize that you’d be better off if you waited for me.”

“You think
my
ego’s the problem?”

“You—”

“Hey, here’s my advice to you,” she retorted, flipping him the finger as she vaulted over the stair railing to the landing below, then did it again to reach the second floor well before him.

She knew what he was doing, trying to control her and the situation. That was how he’d made his billions. But this was her gig, her test, and if they continued with this escalated pushing and pulling as they had over the past few weeks, one or both of them were going to end up hospitalized or dead.

“Sam!” Rick bellowed, charging down the stairs after her.

She’d been a thief all her life except for the past three months, and some habits died harder than others. Dashing into the bedroom, she dove into the wardrobe and snatched
out her knapsack. As many things as she’d been acquiring lately, everything she absolutely needed to survive stayed packed in that knapsack.

In the bedroom entryway he practically crashed into her, and she dodged beneath his grab. He was getting better at tracking her. After all, even for a rich guy he was in damned good shape, and she wasn’t entirely certain she’d be able to take him in a brawl—especially since he’d been known to fight dirty.

Rick had given her a black Mini Cooper, mostly because she thought it was just too cool for words, and last night she’d left it parked half a mile from the estate. Rick had at least half a dozen cars of his own here in Devonshire, all but one of them currently in the large former stable he’d converted into a garage.

On her way out she snatched up her pruners, detouring through the garage and snapping the door cables as she dove out the front rolling doors. Behind her Rick skidded to a halt just in time to avoid getting brained, yelling at her to stop and quit fucking around.
Ha
. She’d barely begun. He’d have to go out through the front now, so she had at least three minutes on him. And she knew where her car was stashed, and he didn’t.

His sleek blue James Bond BMW was parked on the drive, no doubt waiting for him to whisk her away on some picnic or fancy lunch or something, as he seemed to do on an alarmingly regular basis. From her first view of him three months ago, she wouldn’t have thought him a romantic, but he seemed to have an uncanny sense of what she enjoyed and what she’d always longed to do. But fuck that. She refused to give him any points for being nice today.

Clutching the pruners like a knife, she plunged them into the right front tire of the BMW. At the hiss of air escaping,
she yanked it out and went to work on the other three tires. It was a damned shame to disable such a hot car, but she was not going to let this turn into a chase. She’d told him she was leaving, and she meant it, damn it.

She left the pruners in the last tire, then sprinted down the long, sloping drive. His property extended for an obscene number of acres, but he’d been forced by the paparazzi and the public to put up a wall around the house itself. That was where his heaviest security could be found, and it was where she’d been concentrating on protecting both him and the collection of artworks he’d been relocating in anticipation of the gallery wing opening.

This morning, though, she didn’t much care about setting off alarms, or any kind of stealth at all. The locks would be engaged on the main gate, so she simply scaled it, dropping down on the other side to the cobblestoned ground of the drive entry. That done, she hoofed it up the narrow road to the lake turnoff.

Sam couldn’t help looking over her shoulder as she unlocked her car and tossed the knapsack onto the passenger seat. No sign of Rick, but he wouldn’t be far behind. And he wouldn’t be happy.

Even as she started the car and shot down the road toward the main highway, part of her enjoyed this. A little rush of adrenaline, no matter the reason, still helped to satisfy that deep craving inside her—the craving that hadn’t been satisfied nearly enough lately. The craving that he wanted to lock behind a desk—probably in an office without even a window.

Flipping open her cell phone, she dialed British Airways. Using one of Rick’s credit card numbers that she’d memorized, she booked a seat on the next open flight to Miami, and then arranged for a connecting flight to Palm Beach. Credit cards were good. She really should get one soon. As
for paying him back, she’d wire him the damned cash as soon as she got to Florida. She wasn’t going to owe him anything.

Sam watched out the tiny window as the plane took off. No sign of Rick at the terminal. For the first time she wondered if he might have decided not to come after her.

Sitting back, she shrugged. So what if she never saw him again? He wasn’t any better than she was, but he was a hell of a lot more arrogant. She definitely didn’t need that right now.

As she flipped open the
People
magazine she’d snagged in the airport, she found herself looking at him—at them, when they’d attended a movie premiere last month. He looked great in a black tuxedo, while she looked like she was trying not to cringe at the mass of camera flashes and yelling celebrity-holics. She definitely wouldn’t miss that. And she wouldn’t miss him.

Okay. Maybe she would miss him, but it didn’t matter. After three straight months in England, she was going somewhere that for the previous three years she’d almost begun to think of as home. Except that right now in her mind “home” had the alarming tendency to be wherever Rick Addison was.

Mentally she shook herself. She didn’t need him; she simply liked being around him. And she liked the sex. A lot. Even so, the promise she’d made to go straight hadn’t been so much for him as it had been for herself. He didn’t get to take the credit, and he wasn’t going to do any of the work. It was up to her. Her life and the direction it took had always been up to her.

Palm Beach, Florida
Thursday, 4:47 p.m.

S
amantha picked the lock of the small, nondescript house on the fringes of Palm Beach and slipped inside. In the kitchen, a large shiny-headed, dark-skinned man sat at the Formica-topped table and picked at a salad. A burger still wrapped in its yellow paper covering sat on a plate one seat over.

“About time you got here, honey,” Stoney said, a grin curving across his rounded face. “Your cheeseburger with extra-tomato-hold-the-onion’s getting cold.”

“I was trying to surprise you,” she returned, swooping in to kiss him on the cheek before she dumped her knapsack in the corner and dropped into the vacant chair. “How’d you know I’d be here in time for dinner?”

“Check the answering machine,” he said, pointing his elbow toward the counter.

She sighed, pretending that she wasn’t actually relieved that Rick was still in the chase. “How many messages did he leave?”

“Three. I answered it the first time and then wised up. He’s kinda pissed at you, sweetie.”

“Well, it’s mutual.”
Kind of, anyway
. Actually, she mostly wanted to kick him until he apologized for being a jerk and agreed on a stack of Bibles that he would back the hell off and let her try this new experiment without his interference.

“You over with, then?”

Stoney would like that; he hadn’t exactly approved of her relationship with one of the highest profile, wealthiest guys in the world any more than Rick liked her friendship with and reliance on the acquisitions relocation professional. Sam blew out her breath, trying to ignore the tightening of her chest when she thought of never seeing Addison again. “Hell if I know.” She unwrapped the burger and dove in. “He was getting in my way. And I missed you.”

“I missed you, too.” For a long moment Stoney looked at her over a forkful of lettuce and shredded cheese, topped with fat-free Italian dressing. “You sure you want to go legit? Because I got a hell of an offer from Creese, a million for a night’s work in Ven—”

“Shut up,” she interrupted. “Don’t tempt me.”

“But—”

“The last job I pulled, Stoney, three people ended up getting killed. I think that’s a sign.”

“None of that was your fault. Without you there, it would have been worse. And Addison would have been a corpse, too.”

That still upset her. “Maybe. But I’m starting to feel less like Cary Grant in
To Catch a Thief
and more like Bruce Willis in
Die Hard
.” She shrugged. “It’s not so fun when you have to watch out for falling body parts.”

“And?” he prompted. “You’ve done a lot of jobs where nobody even chipped a nail. Besides, you could put up with
a lot of crap for a million. It’s for a lost Michelangelo, Sam. It’s called
The Trinity
.”

“Dammit, Stoney, I said not to tell me.”
Michelangelo
. Shit. She loved Michelangelo. “I’m not doing it. I’m retired.”

“Yeah, because he says so.”

“Are all men deaf? Weren’t you listening to me?”

“Yep. And I hear good, too.”

“Good. Then hear this.
I
said no!”

“Okay, okay, but I’m not throwing away my Rolodex.” Stoney chewed another mouthful of salad. “Just in case.”

“That’s probably a good idea,” she conceded. “Is that why you’re still living in this crappy house, too? Just in case?”

He chuckled. “Saying retired and thinking retired are two different things. And I’ve been keeping a low profile for so long I’m not sure I can do anything different. You have no idea how many bullets I sweated this morning when it dawned on me that you’d given Addison my damn phone number.”

Samantha grimaced. “Your address, too.”

“What?”

“Well, he’s a pain in the ass sometimes, but if something happened to me, I wanted him to be able to get hold of you. Remember, I spent my first two weeks in England in the hospital with a concussion.”

Stoney gave her a disgusted look. “I think you still have a concussion.”

She cleared her throat. Time for a change of subject. “When can I see the office?”

“Since I had a good idea you were coming,” he returned, glancing again at the phone, “I arranged for a tour in about half an hour. It’s right on Worth Avenue, across the street from that Donner guy’s office.”

Sam smiled. “Really? I can get an office across from Tom Donner’s? He’ll hate that.” Rick’s closest friend or not,
Samantha didn’t think she’d ever be able to see eye-to-eye with an attorney—especially one who was such a Boy Scout. Antagonizing Donner, though—that could be fun.

“I think the point is that you wanted me to find something swanky.”

“Only swanky people are going to be able to afford my services. Our services.”

“Right.” His brow furrowed. “This is your gig, honey. I’ll help with the paperwork.”

“You don’t sound very committed.”

“I’m not. You’re kind of stiff-arming me into it, don’t you think?”

“Yep. I can’t hang with you if you’re still redistributing. And I like hanging with you.”

Setting down his fork, Stoney took her fingers in his large hand. “You’re my baby, baby. I’ve been looking after you since you were five, whenever your daddy went out on a job. But I hope you’re really thinking hard about what this’ll mean.”

“It means I’ll be legit, and I won’t have to keep looking over my shoulder to see if Interpol found a fingerprint.”

“Not just that. The whole high-profile thing. You’re getting ready to advertise an office address. That means every cop in the world is going to know where to find you. And so will anybody you ever worked with, or for. And they’re all gonna be worried that you’re better than they are, or that if they cross Sam Jellicoe, she might just hand over evidence about them to the authorities.”

She
had
been thinking about that, and it troubled her immensely. Still, it was her decision, and she wasn’t going to let a bunch of high-line burglars and buyers and arrest-hungry cops—or idiot paparazzi—dictate her life. “I like pressure. Remember?”

“I remember. I also remember that you’re crazy.”

“Yep. Thanks for sticking with me, Stoney.”

“I’d stick with you if you decided to spend the weekend in Venice stealing a Michelangelo, too.”

She was tempted, dammit. “If I were an alcoholic, would you offer me a beer?”

“Is this beer worth a million bucks?”

“Knock it off, bucko.”

As soon as they finished eating he drove them to Worth Avenue. She couldn’t help noting that his red ’93 Chevy pickup could use a detail and a tune-up, but she kept her observations to herself. After all, she had a hot blue Bentley Continental GT parked in Rick’s stadium-sized garage at his massive estate just a couple of miles away. Stoney didn’t precisely know that Rick had given her the car, because she knew exactly what her erstwhile fence would have to say about that particular gift. And he thought she’d been flirting with danger before. Ha.

Tom Donner’s building—or more accurately, the location for the headquarters of the law firm of Donner, Rhodes and Chritchenson—was all reflective, glinting glass. Corporate, real estate, personal, and criminal legal defense all in one ultra-efficient, ultra-expensive location. The less noticeable building across the street lacked two stories on its opposite but had the same gleaming lines of glass and chrome.

“Which floor?” she asked as they parked in the two-story structure beside the building.

“Third. The whole northwest corner.”

“Cool.” Looking up at the building for a moment, she tried to imagine herself with not only an address, but a place of business.

“It’s not cheap, baby. Are you ready to put your Milan retirement fund into renting an office?”

“Christ, how much is it?” she returned dubiously. Her Mi
lan retirement fund, as both she and Stoney termed it, was nothing to sneeze at, but then she had always planned on retiring one day and using it to sustain her in extreme comfort for the remainder of her life. Her retirement had come early, and while affording Milan would still have been pretty easy, if she screwed up in the business world she’d be changing her plans to a retirement home in Fort Lauderdale.

“I’ll let the realtor give you the figures. Her name’s Kim.”

The lobby had a concierge, a pair of elevators, and a marble floor the color and pattern of beach sand. God, it was so tasteful—which was precisely what she’d asked Stoney to look for. They stepped out on the third floor, covered in ivory-colored carpet with brown and green speckles. A series of pond and garden paintings guided the way down the north hallway.

“Monet,” she noted automatically. “Prints, but nice frames.”

“If they were real,
I’d
pay you to lift ’em.”

A door at the far end of the hall opened. “Shut up,” she muttered, assuming a smile and tucking her Gucci purse under her left arm as a petite salt and pepper brunette in one of those ubiquitous blue suit skirts from Neiman Marcus approached. “You must be Kim. I’m Sam. Thanks for meeting me this late.”

The realtor gave her a confident smile and a firm handshake. “Walter and I have looked at seventeen different offices in the area. I’m excited that he liked this one enough to bring you in for approval.”

“Let’s take a look then, shall we?” Sam returned, gesturing her back toward the door. “
Seventeen
outings, Walter?”

Her former fence swatted her on the fanny as he passed her. “That’s enough to qualify as at least two dates,” he murmured. “I can’t help it if she likes me.”

“Hey, go for it, Sto…” She trailed off as she entered the office. A large reception area greeted them first, with a counter for the receptionist and a door on either side of that leading into the depths of the office. Five comfortably sized offices branched out from a squared-off, U-shaped hallway that ran from one reception door to the other. The corner office had a view of the beach and Lake Worth beyond—only the very rich could call a bay “a lake” and have it stick—from one wall-sized window, while the other looked at the law offices of Donner, Rhodes and Chritchenson across Worth Avenue.

While Kim listed off the amenities like central air-conditioning and marble restrooms shared by only two other office suites, Samantha gazed out the window. Weird. Three months after meeting Richard Addison she was preparing to set up an office fifty yards from that of his corporate attorney. Donner was going to crap his pants when he found out.

“Do you have any questions for me?” Kim asked.

“How much?” Sam returned, turning away from the window.

“Eleven thousand one hundred and twelve per month. That doesn’t include phone or electricity, but it does cover your share of the concierge’s wages, building security, elevator maintenance, water, liability insurance, and general common area upkeep.”

“When can we occupy?”

“As soon as you sign the papers,” Kim said, patting her briefcase. “Building management has informed me that there are four other interested parties, but taking into consideration your connections, they agreed to put a hold on the offices through midnight tonight.”

Sam quickly erased her frown. “What connections would those be?”

Kim’s smile twitched. “Walter mentioned that you’re residing at Solano Dorado. That’s Rick Addison’s estate. And I always keep up on the local social news. It’s important to my business. So of course I know that a Samantha Jellicoe’s been dating Mr. Addison. That would be you, I presume.”

Sending a glare at Stoney, Sam drew in a breath. Alfred the butler never told people Bruce Wayne’s secret identity. “Yes, that’s me. I hope you and the building management are aware that these offices will not be part of Rick Addison’s business.”

“Of course,” the realtor returned, though from her expression, she hadn’t been aware of any such thing.

“Then let’s sign those papers.”

“You’re seriously ready to spend 10K on office furniture,” Stoney said for the fourth time, his gaze on the road.

Samantha slouched beside him, her feet up on the dashboard as she composed an ad for an office receptionist. “We’re swanky, remember?” she returned, glancing over at him. “I’ve spent most of my life rubbing elbows with rich marks, Stoney. Trust me, I know what they expect, and I know how to make them comfortable. Okay if I use your fax number until we get one set up at the office?”

“Sure. But don’t you think it’s kind of funny that if you quit spending your Milan retirement fund to make everybody else think you
look
rich, you would be rich? You can rub elbows with them without faking anything, baby.”

“I’m not faking. I’m setting up an…ambience. It’s good business.”

“Yeah. If it doesn’t give me a heart attack first.”

She laughed. “And we thought thievery was dangerous.”

He snickered. “Your dad would be so pissed off at you, spending your cash to go legit.”

“I know.” Samantha shrugged, crossing out a line. “I’m not Martin.”

“I’ll tell you what. Give me a couple of days to look into office furniture styles and shit.”

“With Kim along to give you advice?”

Stoney grinned. “That is a fine idea, honey.”

“Okay. I can work on getting clients, and you give me a couple of ideas about furniture.”

“Works for me. Still not as fun as being in Venice, but…Uh-oh.”

“What?” She looked up, to find him gazing down the street toward his house. Sam straightened.

A sleek green Jaguar, looking completely out of place in the old, shabby neighborhood, crouched at the curb. The driver was nowhere in sight, but of course she knew to whom it belonged. He’d made good time. Really good time.

“You want me to turn around?” Stoney asked dubiously.

“No. He probably heard your truck coming from a mile away, anyway.”

They turned into the driveway. Stoney hung back, but she couldn’t really blame him. She and Rick had argued before, but this wasn’t about a thing or an incident; it was about
them
.

The front door was unlocked, and with a breath she pushed it open. She had a snappy entrance line ready, but when she saw him sitting at the nondescript Formica table in the kitchen and drinking lemonade from one of Stoney’s palm tree glasses, she changed her mind. Neither did she care to put into words how…satisfying it felt to see him, or how her heart beat fast when he met her gaze. “How long have you been here?” she asked.