animal was wreaking a path of pure destruction.
Water and bubbles dripping down her body, Cassie jumped from the tub, grabbed the closest towel, then padded off to strangle Creature.
MAX STONE HAD NEVER run across a lock he couldn’t pick, but when the damn thing was rusted shut there was only so much a man could do. He cast a quick glance around the moonlit backyard, then lifted his elbow and cracked the glass. That done, he took off his shirt, wrapped it around his hand, then pushed the bottom pane out of its frame. The glass chimed in little plinks as it broke against the floor, quieter than if he had just smashed his way through with a rock.
As he slid his arm inside the window, then broke open the latch, Max silently fumed. If he ever again saw that old battle-ax, Minerva Parker, he was going to throttle her. Just thinking about being ripped off by a woman who was eighty if she was a day made him want to knock out a few more windows. Anger, shock and plain old embarrassment made up a large portion of his present state of mind.
Seventy-two hours ago he’d been in St. Petersburg because that’s where treasure hunters went during the IAL conference, and because Victor Hofford had planned to attend. Good old Vic had been a boil on Max’s backside since Max had been a teenager dragged around the globe in his father’s wake and Victor had signed on as the old man’s assistant. Victor, of course, had been an amoral kiss-ass even back then, but Max’s dad had been unable to see past his appeased vanity and recognize that the grad student who assisted him was a glorified grave robber and smuggler.
Max didn’t necessarily have a problem with either of those job titles, but, at the time, he’d been young and hadn’t enjoyed being set up to take the fall when Victor inevitably got caught. He might have been only seventeen, and a hell-raising seventeen at that, but if he was going to rob graves, then smuggle what he stole out of the country, he sure as hell wouldn’t have left any tracks. A fact he’d proven a couple of years later when he’d taken up the profession himself.
His father had been dead more than a decade, and all that old crap with Victor, who was now a professor—one of those Ivy League, tenured thugs whose ethics were worse than most organized-crime bosses—should have become ancient history. However, Max had his reasons and it was usually in his best interest to keep an eye on the bastard.
Victor was all but a professional nemesis, and he’d thrown Max into the role of archenemy. The guy must have watched every James Bond marathon ever shown on the Spike TV channel. The only thing missing was the fuzzy white cat and the shifty accent. Although, staying current on whatever fresh hell Dr. Evil spent his time stoking wasn’t all for Max’s own protection. If he’d been the type of person to keep score, which he was, then he was well in the lead for screwing with Victor’s finds and generally robbing relics right out from underneath the idiot whenever the opportunity arose. Immature, yes, but fun as hell.
Three nights ago, though, at the Czar’s Club, Max had not been in the mood to deal with Victor’s crap and had gotten rid of him with a story in the right ear about a Hindu statue that had supposedly surfaced. Complete and utter bullshit, but Vic had fallen for it.
A smart move as it turned out. Because when the small-time Russian fence had kept shoving his wares in Max’s face, Max had caught a glimpse of something that had sent a queer rush of excitement spreading through his gut. One good look at the lover’s box and Max had known what he’d found. Ironically, his father had been one of the few people to believe in the Gypsy king’s treasure. Which meant that Victor, as dear old dad’s one-time right-hand man, would immediately understand its significance if he ever learned of what Max had stumbled across.
Of course, at the time of his discovery, it had been all Max could do to get his mind around the reality that he was the lucky son of a bitch who’d finally found Rajko’s box. And that Victor Hofford was off on a wild-goose chase. Unfortunately, it had been this euphoric rush of adrenaline and his false sense of superiority that had led to the mortifying downfall of being swindled by a senior citizen.
The woman was an evil genius. Hell, he’d seen professional cons with less finesse. If he weren’t so damned pissed off, he’d be in awe. The whole sham was pure artistry and Max had found himself screwed over and abandoned before he’d even realized she’d gotten to first base. Infuriatingly, when he’d finally tracked Minerva down and accused her of theft (a beyond ironic moment, he admitted) the wily broad had merely waved her hand dismissively and claimed that she had no idea what he was talking about. Worse, she’d stressed that her lover’s box had already been sent to her antique shop in butt-fun, Florida, and that it was too late because she’d given it to her great-niece as a present.
The type of guys who hung out in the Czar’s Club didn’t exactly hand out papers of sale or provenance records, and there had been little that Max could do short of calling out the eighty-year-old woman and challenging her to pistols at dawn. He had no idea what she was trying to pull with her niece, but he didn’t really care since he planned to steal the damned thing back, find the treasure, then live out the rest of his life on easy street. Maybe a tropical island with two or three local women to keep him company.
And even more disconcerting than being the victim of such a farcical robbery was the strange sensation that he couldn’t shake. A niggling itch prickling the back of his neck. As if there was something hazardous waiting for him, but not the kind of peril he was used to facing. Stupid, because nabbing the lover’s box should be a no-worries retrieve and run.
But there you had it. The same rush of adrenaline that pulsed through him when he was on a dangerous hunt was right now surging through his nervous system. To Max, hunting relics was a game, the greater the risk the better. He always gambled, occasionally with his life. He preferred it that way. It made him come alive, the thrill real and palpable in a way nothing else could match, when he risked the ultimate price of failure.
Max challenged every damn odd thrown against him. He flipped fate the bird and got off on the rush of walking away unscathed. And, for some reason, right now his instincts were giving him a hit.
A killer grin curved across his face. Max Stone loved this shit….
Feeling cocky and riding the high—hey, anything was better than thinking about Minerva Parker—he silently climbed through the now-open window. He crouched down once he stepped inside, then pulled out his small flashlight and turned on the beam only to find himself face-to-backside with a stuffed water buffalo. That Minerva had such a bizarre item in the middle of her antique store came as no surprise, but when he stepped around the unfortunate animal and came face-to-breasts with something that was not stuffed and definitely alive, he was more than surprised.
Strangely, he wasn’t overly concerned that, for all practical purposes, he’d just been caught. If he had to, he could take down the small, curvy bundle of woman in front of him in less than a second and Max found himself praying that he had to. He slowly ran the beam from his flashlight up the smooth, wet legs dripping water onto the oriental carpet beneath her dainty feet, and over the soaked, clinging towel that looked more suited to drying a pair of hands than wrapping itself around an adult’s body. But damn if that’s not exactly what the lucky little stretch of terry cloth was being forced to do.
And it was doing a damn poor job of it, he was happy to say, since the damp fabric barely hit the very tippy tops of her thighs, and just covered her small, enticing mound. Max’s fingers itched to flick it away and see the exact color of those pretty feminine curls that were hidden from his gaze.
His mouth suddenly dry, he slipped the light up over the heart-pounding curve of her tiny belly clearly outlined by the clinging towel. The sight was enough to make him want to fall to his knees and push his tongue against the enticing dent of her belly button. Then he moved the light a little farther up, to the absolute sweetest, plumpest handfuls of breasts for
