“I can help.”
She was wheedling. He was dismayed to find he was susceptible to it. He had to toughen up. “You’ll be in the way. I know what I’m doing. You don’t. It’s too dangerous.”
“Are you a professional criminal?”
“In the car, princess.”
She studied him carefully, but he remained unyielding. She finally relented and backed into the car. As he walked toward the dark back entrance of the shop, she hissed out the window, “Size six. Jeans. I want blue jeans. Boot cut. And sunglasses. Ash, do you hear me?”
He turned and glared at her. “I hear you. Barney Fife hears you. Every neighbor for miles around hears you. Could you please pretend you have some common sense? Just for the next twenty minutes.”
She raised the window and turned away from him, nose in the air. She had the perfect nose for it, too. Narrow, straight, very aristocratic. Along with a very stubborn chin.
Accessing the shop was easy. He did harder jobs every day. But he didn’t like doing it. He wasn’t accustomed to stealing from people who probably couldn’t afford it. He told himself the shop had insurance and the insurance company could certainly afford it. But he also saw the three snapshots taped to the side of the cash register—an attractively plump middle-aged woman and two younger women just past their teens who had to be her daughters. This was who he was robbing, for the sake of a spoiled heiress.
He didn’t like himself.
He loaded two shopping bags. One for him, with a limited selection of unremarkable khakis and polo shirts. Then he started on a second shopping bag. He got jeans, size six. Underwear, cotton and serviceable, size selected by memory. Unwelcome, distracting memory. He selected a very ugly T-shirt with gold sequins in the design of a cat, a flouncy nightshirt in pink and yellow, a floppy-brimmed straw hat and a pair of gaudy sunglasses.
To heck with her if she didn’t like his choices.
He made it out of the shop and back to the red van—its selection had been based purely on availability and had nothing to do with Melina’s color preferences—without incident. Melina took the bags and began rummaging through them as he stuck conscientiously to the speed limit all the way out of the sleeping, unsuspecting town.
“If you’re not a professional, you certainly have an interesting hobby,” Melina said, pulling clothing out of a bag.
The judgment in her tone raised his hackles. “I am not a two-bit thief,” he said, aiming for a tone that wasn’t defensive. He knew he’d failed.
“Aren’t you?”
“No, I certainly am not.”
“You’re right! You’re a very classy thief. This is wonderful. Blue jeans! Movie star sunglasses! A gold-sequined T-shirt! You can steal for me anytime, Ash.”
“You were supposed to hate my choices.”
“That’s because you look at me and see a princess. I’m really just a suburban housewife in disguise.” He heard the click of her seat belt and looked to see her clambering over the seat into the back of the van.
He glanced over at her. “What are you doing?”
“Changing clothes.” She winked at him. “You’re welcome to look, but we’ll probably be better off if you keep your eye on that big truck heading this way.”
He quickly focused front and center. The road ahead was as deserted as it had been moments before. But that was okay. He really had no desire whatsoever to watch her change clothes.
Well, maybe a tiny bit of interest. Idle curiosity. She wasn’t exactly a Baywatch babe. A little on the skinny side, actually. Little-boy hips and lots of rib action. Breasts—
Okay. Eyes and mind on the road.
“If you aren’t a two-bit thief,” she said, her voice momentarily muffled by clothing going over her head, “I don’t suppose you’d like to explain how it is you know how to hot-wire cars and break into clothing stores without even turning a hair.”
He thought of trying to explain his childhood, his upbringing, his family. Not possible. You see, we’ve been thieves and con men for generations. But we only steal from the rich. Probably direct descendants of Robin Hood, don’t you see. With a slight variation. We might steal from the rich, but we definitely do not give to the poor. “No, I would not.”
“Is it a compulsion? An addiction of some kind. I’ll bet they have a twelve-step group for it. You could get help. Lead a normal, productive life.”
“The only way I’m going to lead a normal life is to figure out what to do with you.”
“I’m not your problem, Ash Thorndyke. I am perfectly capable of taking care of myself.” The sound of delighted laughter floated up from the back of the van. “And I am perfectly stunning in my new wardrobe.”
She climbed back into the front seat and Ash noted that she did indeed look stunning. The jeans fit like second skin—had she filled out in the last three months, or was his memory that faulty? The T-shirt looked campy and fun, the 1950s sunglasses went perfectly with her gamine-like grin.
“Mel’s the name,” she said, adopting a familiar midwestern twang.
It was the same voice she’d used in London.
“We’ve met,” he said dryly.
Her enthusiasm wilted. “So we have.”
She lapsed into silence. They drove along the coast until he couldn’t stand the silence any longer. He saw a trail off the highway and followed it to a secluded clearing overlooking the ocean.
“Welcome to the Holiday Inn,” he said gruffly.
She scrambled into the back of the van again, making a little nest of her slightly bedraggled evening gown. For a pampered heiress, she looked not the least perturbed to be preparing for a night on the hard floor of a van in the middle of nowhere. She looked as cheerful as a kid on an adventure.
She’d used that to reel him in before, too.
He yanked off his tie and pitched it onto the floor behind the driver’s seat. The cummerbund followed, then his tuxedo jacket, cuff links, watch and shoes. He contemplated the gym shorts and T-shirt from the boutique and decided there was no way he was disrobing with her in the vehicle.
“Would you roll down the windows?” Her voice had a dreamy quality to it. “So we can hear the surf?”
His first impulse was to say no simply for the sake of saying no. Then he realized there was no good reason to be hard-nosed with her. After all, this had been his decision. Nobody’d said he had to bring her with him. As soon as he’d figured out that the deal he’d agreed to was not what he’d thought, he could’ve walked.
But no. He’d had to play hero. Rescue the woman in jeopardy.
He’d had no idea what he’d been getting himself into.
Thoroughly disgruntled with the way his day had gone, he rolled down the windows so Her Highness could hear the surf, crawled into the back, selected the corner farthest from Melina and stretched out on his back.
“Good night” she whispered.
His reluctant response was gruff.
The full moon spilled in through the front windows. The sound of the surf was mesmerizing, stirring a matching rhythm in his pulse—a little wild, a little fast. And Melina Somerset—his Mel Summersby—lay two feet away.
She was fun to kiss, he remembered that in sharpest detail. She could make him laugh right in the middle of a kiss, then keep right on going without spoiling the rhythm of their lovemaking. She liked to tickle him awake in the mornings when he still had lots of sleeping to do—little tickles,