Page 63 of Never Enough

SEPTEMBER 9, 2022

Nemo

Less than five minutes later, they were out of the apartment, down the elevator, and out on the street. Scheherazade was leashed for appearances’ sake until they were on the beach. Then she was free to run. Nemo would have been more than happy to throw her manatee around for her, but she was just excited to run around and around in the surf to get the zoomies out, as well as say hello to all the other dogs.

Gem was sitting on the top of one of the picnic tables, her feet on the bench portion. The sun was starting to dip below the horizon, looking like it was setting the ocean on fire.

Damn, she is breathtaking. She’s so clueless about how beautiful she is.

He sat up next to her on the table, hip-to-hip, thigh-to-thigh, his weight leaning on his forearms, which were resting onthe tops of his thighs, and Scheherazade’s useless leash coiled up in his hand, hanging between his knees. “So. Your da.”

He heard her sigh. The breeze blew some of her curls up into her face, and she tried to move them away, but to no avail. To prevent being blinded, she looked back in the same direction he was, following Scheherazade.

They followed Scheherazade’s erratic meet and greet path with all of the other dogs. He could tell this was going to be a difficult conversation, so unless she initiated eye contact, he would focus elsewhere. His girl was strong, but sometimes, conversations were easier when people didn’t look at each other. If the conversation had been about them, he would have insisted she meet his gaze, but this was about her, and he wanted her to feel safe in opening up to him.

He shouldn’t have been surprised when she picked up the conversation from nearly twenty minutes earlier as if they’d never taken a break from it.

“My father was known as Le Chevalier Noir. Probably the greatest jewel thief of all time. Until…”

“Until?” he prompted.

“Until he made a mistake.” Gem’s smile was sad. “But to understand how that happened, you have to understand who he was as a man my age. He specialized in private residences. It’s how he met my mother.

“He was breaking into a castle, essentially, in Algeria. Back then, he stole items for the sheer joy of it. Along the same lines as Native Americans counting coup, if you’re familiar with the concept.”

“It was more the pride of getting away with it than the actual prize acquired.”

She nodded.

“The way he describes meeting my mother, it was like Errol Flynn inThe Adventures of Robin Hood. Have you seen thatfilm? When he comes through the window and confesses his love for Maid Marian for the first time?”

He nodded. “One of the most romantic moments in film.”

“She wasn’t supposed to be there. He’d met her weeks earlier when he’d been posing as a guest at a public party as a way to case the place. She caught him snooping somewhere he shouldn’t have been. She threatened to turn him in. He made love to her. She let him slip away.

“Weeks later, he made his move. She’d come home from vacation early, and he’d chosen her room to enter through because she was supposed to be gone. Imagine his surprise when he came through the window, and she was sitting there talking on the phone. Not exactly Lady Bess, but he swore that he fell in love that very moment. She claimed to feel the same.

“He left the castle that night with an emerald necklace and my mother. They fled back to England, sold the necklace, and bought a cottage on a hobby farm. She swore that the money, the lifestyle she’d grown up in, was nothing if she couldn’t have him at her side. And maybe, for a while, it was. They lived in that cottage together for eleven years. Had four children—three boys and me. Da continued his jobs, but when I was two, she begged him to give it up. Rowan, my eldest brother, said she hated being alone and lonely on the farm with no one but four young children to talk to, so Da decided to take on a partner. That way, he could be at home more, like a regular father.” She barked out a laugh. “Because being a jewel thief screams with the ability to live a legitimate life.”

The sun was on the verge of totally slipping beneath the sea. Scheherazade had resorted to barking at crabs and driftwood since her new friends were starting to head home with their owners for the night. Nemo’s heart hurt for the quiet beauty of the woman next to him. It didn’t take a genius to figure out how this story was going to end, or how a twenty-four-year-old girl ended up a notorious jewel thief in her own right.

Scheherazade trotted over, but instead of heading to Nemo, she went straight to Gem. Standing on her hind legs, tail whipping back and forth, front paws on Gem’s knees, she soaked in the scratches behind her ears that were probably as much a comforting gesture to Gem as they were for the dog. He watched his pixie bend her face down for doggy kisses, their foreheads touching in the sweetest bonding moment. If he hadn’t already been in love with her, that would have been the moment.

“What happened?” he asked.

Gem reached for Scheherazade’s manatee, which she had faithfully carried in her mouth to the beach. Rearing back her arm, Gem violently flung the toy as far as she could down the sand. With a yip, the dog was off and searching.

“For years, he had worked alone. No one depended on him, and he didn’t have to rely on anyone either. But he met this guy somewhere, somehow, and his fate was written. The first job they did together would be his last. He had a chance at a huge score. Some Indian prince or something. Doesn’t matter in the long run. His partner buggered him at the first sign of trouble. My father fell thirty feet along a sheer cliff, and the man left him at the base. By all rights, Da should be dead. Instead, he had a broken back and two broken legs. Lay there for two days before someone saw him, and even then, that was a miracle. The only thing that saved him from prison was that he didn’t have any equipment on him. He was free-climbing, and they couldn’t prove he was trying to break in. So they took him to the local hospital. He recovered, and when he was healthy enough to leave, he was escorted to the border and informed if he ever returned to the country, he would be imprisoned for life.

“Ma decided enough was enough. She left her four children with my da’s mum, and we never saw her again.”

The breeze shifted and blew curls across her face again. Nemo reached up to smooth them back, but just like before, they immediately blew back into her face. “And little jewel thieves were born,” he surmised.

Gem huffed and rolled her eyes. Scheherazade had returned with her slobbery and salty toy, plopping it in Gem’s lap, her muddy paws once again on her jean-clad legs. Laser-focused on Gem, she watched as the woman picked up the toy and flung it in a new direction. Off she went, barking at every shadow in the twilight.

“You could say that. His body didn’t heal properly. After the accident, he never was able to walk without pain, and the arthritis set in, causing him to lose his dexterity. He figured if he could no longer do the job he loved, then his children would bloody well learn to love it and keep his legacy alive. From the moment he returned home, there was never a moment in my childhood where I wasn’t somehow being trained to be a jewel thief. Making us run across wet, mossy logs. Climbing anything and everything. Competitions to see who could hold their breath the longest. At night, he’d take us places and teach us how to break in and out without leaving a trace. And when we couldn’t be outside, we were learning how to tell the difference between the different uncut stones. What the best environments were for which stones. If it could be turned into a thieving skill, we knew how to do it.”

“All of you are thieves?”

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