try.” He tapped the barrel of the gun against his thigh, sorting through the possibilities. “How close are you with the Wingate family, then?”
“I’m not. My friend is. They aren’t big fans of friends from what will soon be her former life, so don’t get any ideas.” She kept looking at the gun, then back at him. “And after they find out I threw the bachelorette party …” He was surprised to see a rueful smile touching the corners of her mouth when she looked back at him. “You know, on second thought, maybe I will hide out here.”
His smile returned. She was an interesting woman, he’d give her that. She had pluck. And heart. She’d broken into a stranger’s hotel room for the sake of a friend. He might be able to use that good heart to his advantage.
But he hadn’t missed the slight tremor in her fingers. Not quite as insouciant as she’d like him to believe, then.
“If you don’t tell me something of what your plans are,” she added, “then I don’t really have anything on you. You said we’d both have leverage.”
“I have the gun. You have the key.”
“Guess who wins that matchup? If you’re really willing to shoot me, that is.”
“You have no idea what I’m capable of.”
She shuddered. “Exactly.” With a considering look on her face, she looked at the bed.
He followed her gaze, more intrigued than he should be by her sudden interest in that particular part of the room. In fact, he was more intrigued by her than he should be, period. He had never minded working alone, living alone. It suited him, or he’d grown to embrace it, anyway. It was essential to his line of work, at which he excelled. And it made sense to stick with what one was good at, didn’t it?
Partners led to problems. Personally and professionally. That was his motto and nothing that he’d learned in life thus far had encouraged him to change that belief. He certainly had no business changing it now, of all times. For the first time he was operating on his own, not in the employ of someone else. He had this one chance to fix what he’d screwed up, and right a very lamentable wrong.
“Somebody else might,” she said, pulling him from his straying thoughts.
“Somebody else might what?”
“Know what you’re capable of. The owner of those panties, for instance.”
He smiled. “The cleaning staff here might need a bit of prodding to be more thorough in their cleaning.”
“Indiana Jones wouldn’t have found those panties. I don’t even want to know what you were doing to bury them so deep.” Her cheeks turned rosy as her unintentional entendre hung out there for a long beat. But she recovered and bulled on with an attempt at a carefree lift of the shoulder. “For all I know you want to get into another guest’s room over some woman you’re involved with. Is this a domestic situation?”
“Hardly.”
“You say that as if you can’t imagine a woman being so important.”
“Your supposition, not mine,” he said, more irritated than he should be by her summation. After all, hadn’t he just had the exact same thought?
“So, if it’s not a lover or significant other behind all this, then who?”
“Who said it was a who?” He immediately gave himself a swift mental kick. She had this way of easing information out of him when he wasn’t paying attention. Those soft curls, big eyes and cupid-bow lips, made it too easy to forget she could potentially ruin everything. He wasn’t entirely sure what his plans were going to be, moving forward, but if he didn’t get the Shay back under Guinn’s deserving ownership first, it might not matter.
“So, you don’t want access to someone, you want access to something. But guests generally don’t keep anything of great value in their rooms. Anything valuable would be in the hotel safe. Which is well guarded,” she hurried to add. “With everyone so concerned these days about security, the whole system was overhauled recently and now uses the latest technology.”
“Yes, I believe you offered its protection earlier, for the safekeeping of my leverage here.” He wiggled the gun barrel. “So … given your insight into the inner workings of the hotel, including security, I assume that passkey is yours, then?”
The flash that crossed her face was answer enough, but he waited to hear her response. It was a small measure of comfort to know he wasn’t the only one having difficulty keeping delicate information under wraps. Except he was the professional here. So it was a surprise when she opted to not risk damning herself further and kept silent. An admirable trait not often seen in the fairer sex, in his experience.
“Well, your having access to the vault does add a new element to the situation,” he said. “A good one, I might add.”
She looked away and he could see the self-recrimination on her lovely face. She really wasn’t having a good day.
Any other time, he’d be sympathetic. In fact, he’d probably have even offered to help her out. More than was probably wise, he’d been the champion of the downtrodden and the underdog when considering which job to take on. His bottom line wasn’t often improved by those choices, but he slept better at night, which was a fine trade-off as far as he was concerned. If only he’d followed his gut where Guinn was concerned, who’d quite clearly been the underdog, but with a rather ambiguous claim on the Shay … and not helped Tolliver, with his well-documented claim to the stone, he wouldn’t be in his current situation.
But it was precisely because of his current situation that helping her was out of the question. She’d gotten herself into her current predicament by making less-than-wise choices herself. Unfortunately, she was going to have to be left to deal with those consequences. She was handing him a possible solution he couldn’t ignore. As a hotel employee with a clear knowledge of hotel security protocol, her unauthorized use of a master key took on even greater significance. Which meant more leverage for him. He had no choice but to use it.
“How do I know you won’t turn me in after you get what you want?” she asked.
“You don’t.”
“Which brings me back to the whole leverage debate. What do I have on you? Who are you? Do you work for the government? Ours, yours, whatever?”
“Nothing so dashing and heroic. What makes you think I’m not just a common, garden-variety thief?”
“There’s nothing common about you,” she replied, then her cheeks once again flushed the most becoming shade of pink. “I mean, your accent is polished, not street-wise, and you carry yourself quite—” Her flush deepened and she looked away from where her gaze had fixed itself on the lower half of his body. “Never mind.” She straightened in her chair and lifted her chin, which would have come across far more effectively if she wasn’t still hugging herself around the middle. “So you’re a thief. You do this often, then?”
“I’m a recovery specialist.” Which was the truth. His job was to find things that people had lost, or had otherwise lost possession of. He only worked for those who could prove a rightful claim on whatever it was they wanted recovered. Of course, he tried, as best as he could, to stay within the bounds of local laws, wherever he happened to be. On the rare occasion he had to
