Twice the Temptation (49 page)

 
“Rick!” she yelled.

 
“I’m here!” he returned, pushing past Thanefield to head for her.

 
“He’s in a cop uniform with wet pants and a blue shoulder bag!”

 
“Stay where you are, Miss Jellicoe!” Thanefield ordered. “You, too, Mr. Addison. I don’t know quite what’s going on, but I will figure it out.”

 
An officer grabbed Richard around the shoulders. “You heard him,” the man grunted, pulling in the direction of the perimeter behind them. “This is a police matter.”

 
Nobody kept him from Samantha. Moving fast, Richard elbowed the officer in the gut, sweeping a leg around to take him to the ground. As Rick faced the hall again to continue toward Samantha, the downed officer snickered.

 
“She does have a way of getting under your skin, doesn’t she?”

 
Richard spun around, but Shepherd was already on his feet, running in the direction of the garden. “Oh, no, you don’t,” he muttered, and charged after him. “Donner! Stop that man!”

 
Shepherd was clearly in good shape, but Richard was no slouch, himself. At the edge of the garden he launched into a flying tackle, hitting the thief squarely in the back of the legs. They both went down into a tangled heap amid his administrators and business associates.

 
He got in one good punch before more officers arrived to pull him off. Samantha grabbed his shoulder as they tried to take him to the ground. “Addison’s the good guy!” she yelled. “That’s Bryce Shepherd. He is not a cop. Look at him, for God’s sake!”

 
Thanefield stepped in, turning Shepherd toward the light left around the hall. “I know all of my men by sight,” he said after a moment, “and you’re not one of them. Put him in handcuffs.”

 
“I’ll take care of that,” Inspector Larson put in, stepping into the middle of the crowd. “I’ve been tracking Mr. Shepherd for several weeks now.”

 
“You are so full of shit, your eyes are brown,” Samantha retorted. “They’re working together.”

 
“Don’t make slanderous accusations you can’t prove, Miss Jellicoe,” Larson said coldly. “I am the ranking officer here, and this is my case.”

 
“Put a sock in it, Larson,” Shepherd said unexpectedly. “You took a shot at my girl. That’s against the rules. He’s my partner, fellas. Put him in cuffs.”

 
As they slowly began to bring some order to the chaos, Richard took off his tuxedo jacket and put it over Samantha’s shoulders. “You’re half naked,” he said, buttoning the middle two buttons.

 
“Line of duty,” she returned.

 
“Hurt?”

 
“Bruised, but no new holes.”

 
“We need to talk.”

 
“Later.” Samantha left Richard’s side to walk up to
Shepherd. “I warned you that you wouldn’t get away with it,” she said with a small, clearly regretful smile.

 
“I’m not in prison yet, me girl,” he returned, “and I’ve got a cop I can rat out as leverage.”

 
She leaned her hands on his hips, went up on her toes, and kissed him. “Stay away from my stuff, Bryce.”

 
“I can’t make you any guarantees, love.” His gaze turned to Richard, who was doing his best not to kill anyone. “You think you can hold on to her?”

 
“Bet on it.”

 
“I may just do that. Cheers.”

 
They headed for the police cars scattered across the gravel parking lot, but Richard grabbed Samantha’s hand before she could follow. “I think now would be a good time to talk.”

 
“You have guests.”

 
“I think the thousand police cars are keeping them entertained. You kissed him.” Anger, jealousy, worry—he couldn’t quite put a name to the feeling running through his chest and his gut, but he didn’t like it.

 
“I had to.” She swiped wet hair from her face.

 
“‘Had to’?” he repeated, trying to keep his voice low and even. “And why is that, exactly?”

 
She lifted her hand, dumping the contents into his. “I had this with me. I planted it on you, but nothing happened, and so I took it back to return it to the safe, except then all hell broke loose, and anyway, Bryce got hold of it. I had to get it back.”

 
“You planted it—”

 
Samantha shot him her quicksilver grin, tired and disheveled as it was. “Once he had it, I knew he wouldn’t get away. It’s cursed.”

 
Obviously she wasn’t going to apologize for trying to see him cursed. Richard frowned, then took her shoulders
and pulled her up against him. Leaning his face down, he kissed her hard. The chances she took—and she thought they were exciting. She’d said that the curse hadn’t worked on him. Had he had bad luck? The dinner had gone well, but he and Samantha had argued. And then she’d nearly been shot. Bloody hell. Perhaps he wasn’t as immune to luck as he’d thought.

 
“I was worried that you would have all the fun,” he murmured against her mouth, lying, kissing her again, wishing he could somehow pull her inside him, hold her safe from the harm she kept seeking out.

 
“You got to punch somebody,” she returned with a low chuckle. “I know how you like that.”

 
“Are you two finished beating bad guys?” Tom Donner’s drawl came from a few feet away. Silently he handed Samantha her red shoes.

 
Christ, he’d nearly forgotten that he was in the middle of hosting a dinner party. “For the moment,” he returned, tilting his forehead against Samantha’s. “Shall we dance?”

 
“Only if you stash that diamond somewhere first. I am not going to risk breaking a heel.” She held up a shoe.

 
He wasn’t quite ready to admit anything aloud yet, but the more he thought about it, the more he was convinced that Samantha—and his great-great-grandparents—were correct about the Nightshade Diamond. It was cursed. Larson had threatened that Sam might somehow be implicated in any robbery attempt, they’d realized they had a traitor in their midst, she’d been shot at, and he’d been forced to watch her vanish into a building alone with her former lover and fellow thief while armed police surrounded her. “I’ll see to it,” he said.

 
“Promise?”

 
“Promise.”

 
Epilogue

 
Thursday, 11:47 a.m.

 
Samantha lifted the access panel and shimmiedbeneath the display cabinet. Holding a screwdriver in her teeth, she patiently brought the dozen hanging wires together, then clipped them into the connectors and screwed that bundle into the main circuit panel.

 
“Samantha?”

 
“Here,” she returned, wiggling one foot. “I’ll be out in a sec.”

 
She finished tightening everything down and wriggled out again. Rick, hands in his jeans pockets and a canvas bag over one shoulder, looked down at her from beside the display. “How are repairs going?” he asked, offering a hand to pull her to her feet.

 
“Good.” She dusted off her pants as she stood. “I think we’ll be ready to open again by Saturday.”

 
“I heard that Armand Montgomery will be returning to help share the supervision duties.”

 
Samantha grinned. “Yep.” Thankfully the V & A hadn’t blamed her for the fiasco, since Henry Larson had clearly set things up for Bryce. And because of his
meddling, she’d made a few additional adjustments, just to keep things interesting for any more prospective thieves.

 
Rick kicked his toe against hers, a playful, boyish gesture she wasn’t used to seeing, but very much enjoyed.Wow. He was her guy, all right. “Do you have time for some lunch out on the terrace?” he asked.

 
“Sure.” She set down the screwdriver.

 
“One thing first.” He faced the busy room. “My apologies, but could you give us a moment of privacy?” he asked.

 
“Rick,” she muttered, frowning. “These are my—”

 
“Your people, and your gig,” he finished for her. “I know. Bear with me.”

 
“Fine.”

 
Once they were alone, he took her fingers and drew her up against him. Samantha tangled her fingers into his black hair and kissed him. The security cameras were up and running again, but knowing Craigson had his eye on her was not going to stop her from enjoying one of Rick’s liquid sex kisses.

 
Slowly Rick straightened. “You’re not sad about Shepherd?” he asked.

 
She shrugged. “I don’t get why he did this. He had to know that I’d have just about every possible trick in mind when I set things up.”

 
“You like a challenge,” he returned, twining his fingers around hers. “Maybe he doesn’t know better than to resist one.”

 
“Apparently not.”

 
He glanced toward the nearest camera. “Can you get those shut off for a minute?”

 
“I’m not having sex in here with you.” That just wouldn’t be professional. Fun, but not professional.

 
“It’s not for that.”

 
“Fine.” She sighed, picking up one of the walkies from a ladder step. “Craigson. Give me some privacy, will you?”

 
“Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do,” he returned. The cameras’ red lights blinked off.

 
“Okay. Now what?”

 
Richard kissed her again, lips and teeth and tongue. Then he opened the canvas bag and produced a familiar mahogany box. “Now let’s take care of this, shall we?”

 
Hesitating, she took the box. When she opened it, Connoll Addison’s original note was inside, along with a new one. Beneath them both, the velvet bag containing the Nightshade Diamond lay nestled and secure.

 
“Read it,” he urged, taking the box back while she freed his note.

 
“‘To Whom It May Concern,’” she read, glancing up at him. “‘You may not believe in curses; I didn’t. I do now. Look at the diamond, hold it in your hand, and then put it back. It’s brought the Addison family good luck for nearly two hundred years, and I expect that that luck will have lasted up until the moment you made this discovery. Put it back, and the luck will continue. Regards, Richard Addison, Marquis of Rawley.’”

 
“Sufficient, do you think?” he asked.

 
Samantha folded the note again and placed it back in the box. “Do you really believe that?”

 
“I do. And I’m not willing to risk what a curse might do to us in the long run, considering what’s happened over the past week.” He closed the box, wrapped it in cloth, and headed to the back of the room.

 
She watched as he climbed up on a stepladder, re
moved the loose stone, and put the Nightshade Diamond back into its hiding place. “I wonder what the tourists would say if they knew there was an unalarmed sixteen-million-dollar diamond a foot above their heads,” she mused.