The only person who knew the whole truth had been Marshall. To him, she’d confessed everything. Not the sordid details—she’d spared him that pain—but she’d been brutally honest about her weaknesses and how Daniel had played to every single one.
And yet, for reasons she’d never completely understand, he’d forgiven her. They’d had to work hard to rebuild their relationship, but in the end, they’d been happy. If her past sins came to light, Marshall’s memory would be tarnished, too. She couldn’t allow that to happen.
She cursed, unable to spot her driver. The delay gave Daniel a chance to walk around in front of her. Though he’d slipped his hands casually into his pockets, his tight jaw and focused stare were anything but relaxed.
“I’m the last person you should ask for help.”
“No, you’re the only person I can ask. You already know the painting’s history and you owe me. It was hard to track you down, but no harder than asking you for help.”
“Do you think staying away from you has been easy? For five years, I’ve pretended you didn’t exist. I let you have your perfect marriage with your perfect man. Now you show up here acting like a sex goddess on the prowl, make me an offer I can’t refuse, but then freak out after one innocent touch? I’m a thief, Abby. Not a monster. I hurt you once. I won’t do it again.”
She swallowed deeply, then straightened her spine, determined to regain her control. He sounded so sincere, but she knew better than to fall for his line, no matter how artfully he delivered it. Daniel Burnett couldn’t be trusted with her emotions. She wasn’t even sure she could trust herself with them.
“I have no reason to believe you,” she said. “But if you agree to help me, I have no choice but to take you at your less-than-reliable word.”
“So we’re both backed into a corner.”
He stretched out his right hand, but stopped just a millimeter shy of touching her cheek. In the span of a heartbeat, his attention shifted from her to the ring on his right hand, the one he’d been trying desperately to get off when she’d first seen him in the bar.
She grabbed the opportunity to change the subject.
“What is that?”
“Recently inherited family treasure.”
He turned his hand so she could see the stone. As jewelry went, it was fairly pathetic. The black opals on the sides were brilliant with bright blues and greens, but the center stone, which caught the marquee lights with more brilliance than she expected, had a huge, zigzagged scratch.
“Maybe you can barter with the collector who has my painting,” she suggested. The two items were nowhere near equal value, but she couldn’t ignore the irony that he now possessed a family treasure when he’d been responsible for stealing hers.
“If I could get the damned thing off my finger. But it’s supposed to bring luck, so to speak, to the men in my family. Could come in handy while I’m breaking my rule of never stealing the same piece of art twice.”
Her heart skipped a beat. “You’re going to help me?”
“Yes, and not because of the threat to my livelihood. You may not believe me, but I’m helping you because it’s the right thing to do.”
His voice inflected with his obvious disbelief, but before she could question his sincerity, he gestured gallantly toward the line of limousines and gave her a little bow, as if inviting her to lead the way.
Her shoes were rooted to the sidewalk.
“Without any expectations?”
He looked up at the dark night sky as if asking for divine intervention. “Really, woman, when you have the advantage, take it and run.”
Abby opened her mouth to object, but then decided to quit while she was ahead. The hard part of this operation, apparently, was not getting Daniel on board—but keeping him from running roughshod over her.
She had to stay focused. Eyes on the prize.
And hands off the merchandise.
She finally spotted her limo. With a nod to the driver, she slid into the backseat, adjusting her skirt as the car dipped slightly while Daniel climbed in beside her. Despite the roominess of the interior, he sat as close to her as he could.
The driver slammed the door.
“There’s space in this car for eight people,” she said. “Feel free to spread out.”
He made that clicking sound with his tongue. “Thanks, but I’m fine here.”
She’d had no illusions that he’d make this easy, but she was up to the challenge. She had to be.
She gave the driver instructions to take them straight to the airport, and then didn’t object when Daniel closed the glass partition.
“Should we stop anywhere to retrieve your things?” she asked.
“You can buy me whatever I need.”
“What you need most can’t be bought,” she quipped.
He chuckled. “Clever. So you’ve developed a sharp tongue since last we met?”
“I’ve developed a lot of things. I was a child when last we met.”
He turned so that his body, so close, faced hers. “You were a lot of things, Abigail Alexandra Albertini, but a child you were not.”
She didn’t remember ever telling him her alliterative middle name, but his casual use of it reminded her how much more he knew about her than she did about him.
To find Daniel Burnett, she’d had to employ several private investigators. Each one had provided tidbits of his past, disjointed and disconnected, until she’d pieced them together into an incomplete picture of his life.
His mother had turned him over to family services when he was five years old. She’d died of a drug overdose about a year later. He’d been shuttled from foster home to foster home until he was ten, when he’d landed with the Burnett family, who’d adopted him. His juvenile record included multiple counts for petty theft and trespassing, but by the time he turned eighteen, his name disappeared from arrest records. He’d been interviewed about a few cases in his early twenties and the name Daniel Burnett had dominated watch lists for museums, collectors and auction houses worldwide since, but he had never been prosecuted, not even after a security guard was seriously injured at the site of his last job.
When she combined what she’d learned from her private investigators with what she knew from their affair, the idea that he’d nearly killed someone struck her as unlikely. Even after he’d betrayed her trust in the worst possible way, Daniel was a lover, not a fighter. She couldn’t believe he’d try to kill someone.
“What happened in California?” she asked.
“I grew up in California,” he answered. “Many things happened there.”
“I mean your arrest.”
“Rethinking your decision to tap me for the honor of retrieving your stolen property?” he asked, his eyes glittering with his tease—one likely meant to divert her line of questioning.
“No,” she said. “It’s just that part of your appeal as a thief is that up until a couple of months ago, you’d never seen the inside of a jail cell for more than a few hours. And you definitely never hurt anyone.”
“You’ve checked up on me?”
“Of course,” she replied.
“Smart girl,” he admitted. “You probably won’t believe this, but I was set up for that mess in California.”
“By whom?”
He