Page 38 of The Love Bandits

Elaine pauses and then continues walking again, unswayed. Completely unintimidated by me.

Then it hits me that she’s not heading for the door, or opening her mouth to shoutThief, thief.

No, she’s approaching the now-empty display case. I watch in disbelief as she stops in front of it. Then she untucks her button-up black shirt and pulls it up, flashing her tanned, taut abdomen, instantly making my mouth dry, and opens the case. I watch in disbelief as she pulls the fake necklace out of her pants pocket and wipes it down.

“You were right,” I comment through a dry mouth. “It won’t fool anyone. It looks like it came out of a shitty gumball machine.”

Her lips tip up slightly, but she arranges the necklace in the case, careful not to leave prints anywhere. In the process, she shows me more of that tanned torso and a glimpse of her bra—red, lacy—and—

This is not the fucking time to get hard over a woman who hates you, Jake, for fuck’s sake.

“It’s the one from your apartment,” she says as she closes the case, then gives me a pointed look. “It’s pretty good, you know. Suspiciously good.”

“You had it in your pocket the whole time?” I ask, torn between being impressed and sort of pissed. Very aware that she neither cares whether I’m impressed nor believes I have any excuse to be pissed.

“You should’ve guessed,” she says, a challenge in her eyes.

“I should have,” I agree. I pause, staring at her in the dark, taking in the soft features and hard eyes of this hellcat of a woman. She’s a mystery to me. An enigma wrapped in a fucking riddle. If I were another kind of man, a man who knew how to get close to people instead of just swimming at the surface, I’d want to unspool her mysteries to see what lies beneath.

“Why are you helping me?” I ask, my voice quavering in a way I don’t at all like.

Never show weakness, especially not to a mark.

She’s not a mark, but she’s something more dangerous—a woman who could destroy me with a word.

“I understand what it’s like…to have just one person.”

I can see in her eyes that she does understand, and I feel a pulse of connection.Realconnection.

“I’m sorry,” I say, barely aware of what I’m apologizing for. Trying to steal from her boss?

Pinning her to a wall earlier?

She looks me dead in the eye and says, “You should be.”

There are footfalls just beyond the door. Close. I should have heard them earlier, but I’ve been wrapped up in our stand-off. Whoever it is will be in here within seconds…

We have every right to be in this room, but it seems like a bad idea to be caught standing directly in front of the case. If we’re seen there, someone might get the idea to take a closer look at the necklace, and even if the fake is good, I’m not convinced it’sthatgood.

There’s barely time to think—definitely no time to say anything—so I just lift Elaine up by the waist and take the three big steps back toward that chair from earlier before setting her back down on her feet. Her pretty red lips open, probably to swear at me. But before any words or disgruntled sounds can escape, I lean down and capture her mouth with mine, my hand still wrapped around the sexy curve of her hip as I coax her to open for me, to put on a good show for our guest.

To give in to this strange, senseless pull…

Understanding registers in her eyes as the sound of the creaking door reaches us, but she still sinks her teeth into my lip, making me laugh into her mouth and flex my fingers on her hip.

“Oh shit,” Anthony says, and I pull away, making a show of being surprised and then embarrassed.

“Sorry, man,” I say, not letting go of Elaine, because that wouldn’t be the gentlemanly thing to do. Jake Jeffries, who just got pulled off the execution block seconds before the cleaver came down, is most certainly a gentleman. “We got a little carried away.”

Elaine layers her hand over mine on her waist, digging her fingernails in even as she makes a show of leaning into me.

He smiles slightly—agood job, buddykind of smile—then says, “We’re calling the evening short.” He rubs a hand over his jaw. “I was hoping you’d be able to talk to my mom, but things got a little chaotic.”

No shit. They started that way and stayed it.

“We’ll do it another time,” I say with an insincere smile.

Only…it occurs to me that maybe we really will have to do it another time. If Jake Jeffries isn’t dead, then he’ll have to make himself useful, and my top two suspects for snatching the necklace are Anthony and Nina. He couldn’t have taken it personally unless he moves at the speed of light, but she could have been lying in wait. Clearing my throat, I add, “Maybe we could do a family therapy session.”

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