“Does your husband know you tracked me down?” he asked, wondering why a smart guy like Marshall Chamberlain would allow his wife to seek him out, particularly while wearing that little black dream of a dress.
He watched her cheek hollow as she sucked on the inner flesh.
That would be a no.
And yet, she replied, “I’d like to think so.”
He glanced at her hand.
She wasn’t wearing a ring.
“Wait a minute.”
Since she’d shown up at the casino, she hadn’t answered a single question about her husband. Until now, he’d figured she was on a secret mission, hoping to keep Marshall from having to relive the incident that almost waylaid their wedding.
But she hadn’t mentioned Marshall at all. In fact, the only time the man had come up in conversation was when Danny had asked.
He leaned forward and gazed purposefully into her eyes, his chest tightening as she tried to keep her face impassive and cool. She was biting the inside of her mouth again, but instead of making her mouth look pinched or prissy, her lips puckered in a way that tugged at his heart.
“What aren’t you telling me?” he asked.
“About a gazillion things that are none of your business,” she snapped.
“I mean about Marshall.”
When Abby had thrown him out of her room on the night before her wedding, Danny had taken the rejection hard. He always spent the weeks after a job underground, but after Chicago, he’d gone completely off the grid in Mexico. After a few cases of tequila and more beer than a man should drink in a lifetime, he’d finally decided that Abby was better off without him. If Marshall Chamberlain loved her enough to forgive her indiscretion, then he must have loved her more than Danny could even comprehend.
So how the hell could he have left her a short five years later?
“I can’t believe he dumped you.”
“He didn’t,” she said, her eyes flaring.
“Then where the hell is he? Or is thievery just beneath him, so he’s left it all to you?”
“There isn’t anything much beneath him anymore except dirt,” she choked out. “He’s dead.”
She made the callous statement, then instantly turned away. She flattened her left palm on the window, as if she needed contact with the glass to cool her emotions. Or maybe she was mourning the absence of her ring. A slight shadow encircled her fourth finger, a reminder of where the band had been. She’d taken it off, but only recently.
“I’m sorry. When?”
She gave a tiny shrug, as if she hadn’t been counting the days, when he guessed she could probably calculate the man’s last breath to the minute.
“A little over a year ago. He was on his way to his office and a semi lost control on the highway and he was gone.”
The crack in the foundation of her voice tore at his insides, but Danny had no right to share her grief. No right to try and comfort her.
But he still had to say something.
“I really am sorry.”
“So am I. But if there was one thing I knew about Marshall, and I knew everything about him,” she said, skewering him with a glare that dared him to challenge her, “it was that he’d want me to move forward. Put the past behind me, once and for all. That was the entire basis for our marriage. He never once threw our affair in my face. He didn’t make me pay for how I betrayed him with you, even though he probably should have.”
Danny couldn’t believe how easily she talked about this. The Abby he’d known had always shied away from discussing anything painful or unpleasant. Despite his offers to meet her out of town, even a suggestion they fly up to Toronto for a rendezvous, their liaisons had only taken place at night, in locked rooms or shadowed corners.
Even when they were alone, she’d been conditioned to keep her deepest thoughts to herself. He’d had to pull out all the stops to sneak behind her private walls. But he’d succeeded, or at least, he’d thought he had. By the time he’d finally learned how to retrieve the painting without triggering her security system, he’d discovered all sorts of things about her that he hadn’t really wanted to know.
Her secret passions.
Her most erotic fantasies.
Her deepest, most desperate dreams.
She’d also confessed how desperately she wanted a man who understood the real her. Not the cool, controlled young lady of wealth that she’d been trained to be, but the innately curious, impassioned lover of sensual beauty that she kept so well hidden.
Before him, she hadn’t revealed that woman to anyone, not even to her fiancé. She’d been too embarrassed, too self-conscious, too afraid that Marshall would run in the other direction quicker than he could say scandal.
David Brandon, on the other hand, knew precisely how to coax that side of her out of hiding. He’d cultivated her need for freedom with honeyed words and wicked suggestions spoken to burn through the layers of her fears. David Brandon did not judge her. How could he, when his whole persona was one big fat lie?
The plane began to move, so they were quiet while the pilot taxied down the runway, gained speed and then altitude. When a ding indicated they’d reached their cruising height, Danny caught Abby staring at him, her eyebrows scrunched tightly together.
“I don’t understand you,” she declared.
“Welcome to the club. I can’t figure me out, and I am, hands down, the smartest guy I know.”
She didn’t crack a smile.
“I mean, I get that you’re all complicated and tragic. Charming on the outside and brooding and miserable on the inside.” She waved her hand, as if her gesture could dismiss the very core of him, which he’d never heard so succinctly summarized. “But why would you come with me so easily? Is it just because you might be exposed?”
“Nope,” he said breezily. “I’m in it for the cash.”
“I didn’t offer you any money. And even if I did, you don’t need it. You have a very wealthy brother who paid a king’s ransom for the criminal attorney who got you out of jail. And you and I both know that you have to have a boatload of cash stashed somewhere. International art thieves don’t come cheap.”
“You’ve certainly learned a lot over the last five years.”
“To say the least,” she replied.
“Care to share some of your wisdom?”
He didn’t know why he was asking. In his entire life, he’d never once asked for anyone’s advice. Sure, he’d watched people he admired and listened carefully whenever they spoke to glean whatever nugget of information he could mine for a greater take, but he’d never out-and-out asked anyone to share their insight about…well, about anything.
Unfortunately, from Abby’s frown, she didn’t look anxious to share.
“I’m sure the things I’ve learned you committed to memory by the age of eight.”
“That everyone is a liar and a thief, you mean. In one way or another?”
“Yeah,” she acknowledged. “That.”
“You’re not,” he argued.
“Not what? A liar? Please, Daniel. Don’t