GRANT

(Sixteen months ago)

“If you’re going to successfully shoot the bastard, the first thing you need to do is firm your stance.”

Although I knew it was dangerous, I placed my hands on Penelope’s hips and nudged her thighs apart with my knee. Her body responded to my directions the way I knew it would—gracefully and with suspicious compliance.

Legs open. Check.

Hair tossed back. Done.

Ass pressed firmly against my groin. Fuck.

This was going to be a lot more difficult than I’d expected.

“And don’t hold the gun like it’s going to bite you,” I said. My voice came out gravelly, but I was too happy to find it worked at all to care. “I swear, Penelope. Haven’t you ever had one of these in your hands before?”

“No, never,” she replied and gave her head another toss. Her reddish-blond locks whipped backward, scoring my cheek and leaving the unmistakable scent of raspberries behind. “I’m not a fan of violence.”

This time, I had to struggle to keep the laughter at bay. Penelope Blue: world-famous jewel thief, insouciant girlfriend to a federal agent, pacifist. The unlikely combination of attributes made zero sense, yet here we were.

“I don’t see what the big deal about shooting wooden ducks is, anyway,” she added with a glance over her shoulder. There was challenge and laughter in that glance—another pair of remarkably attractive attributes that belonged to this woman and this woman alone. “If I really wanted one of those stuffed bears, I could just ask that man to give me one. I’m sure I could convince him.”

The man in question stood watching us from the other side of the Coney Island carnival booth, his red-and-white striped apron clutched in his hands. His indulgent grin was all the proof I needed to agree with Penelope. There were few people in this world who could resist her when she chose to put in the effort. I sure as hell wasn’t one of them.

Besides, if she couldn’t charm a bear out of him, she’d come up with an elaborate scheme to steal one instead. Knowing Penelope, it would involve at least one explosion, a mad climb up the side of the Wonder Wheel, and a handoff from where she’d no doubt be hidden inside the hot dog vender’s cart at the park’s entrance.

But no guns. The lady disliked violence.

“This isn’t about a stuffed bear,” I said as sternly as I could. “This is about protection. How can you expect to survive in this world if you can’t shoot a moving target?”

“By my wits, of course,” she replied with a laugh. “But I guess your way is fine, too, if you don’t have any of those.”

“I have plenty of wits,” I growled.

It was true. Wits were a must when dating a woman like Penelope Blue—wits and a sense of humor and an infinite reserve of patience. The gun helped, too. Two months into this relationship, and I was still shocked I hadn’t had recourse to shoot her yet. She’d done more than enough to warrant it.

“Of course you do,” she cooed. “So many wits.”

“Thank you,” I said, taking the high road by ignoring the provocation. Then, because the high road and Penelope Blue were two mutually exclusive entities, I added, “You know, some girlfriends would appreciate a boyfriend who pulls out all the stops for a date like this.”

As expected, my casual use of the terms boyfriend and girlfriend held her in momentary check. Poor Penelope. She could scale skyscrapers and laugh in the face of law enforcement, but talk of romance paralyzed her.

Especially when it came to me.

“Fine,” she finally said, recovering with a mock sigh. “Your barbarism wins for today. Let’s murder some wooden ducks.”

Although I could have stood there for hours, verbally sparring and basking in her proximity, I released my hold on the tantalizing curves of her hips and focused on the task at hand. “Put your pointer finger on the trigger, but just barely,” I instructed. “You want to hold the gun firm but your finger limp. You’ll avoid any premature misfires that way.”

BANG.

Penelope’s whole body tensed as the gun went off and the blast of air went wide, but she didn’t scream or jump as I could tell she wanted to. She had far too much control over her reflexes for that. It was the cat burglar in her.

“I hate to criticize, but that wasn’t what I’d call limp,” I said.

Her response was to bump her ass against my groin playfully. “Neither is that,” she teased.

Penelope spoke no more than the truth—my body’s response to hers was a palpable, physical, damn near painful thing. But as I always did in situations like these, I ignored it and her. It was the only way I’d managed to make it this far in this strange relationship of ours. I had to ignore her strongest provocations, subdue the various…emotions she gave rise to, and focus on my end goal: complete and utter victory over the enemy I was steadily falling for.

“If I didn’t know you better, I’d think you were lying about being a terrible shot just to mess with me.” I lifted her arms to the proper position once again.

Her body was small but strong, and she held the gun perfectly parallel to the ground. The yellow wooden ducks marched in their well-timed procession back and forth across the booth, daring her to knock them over.

“How do you know I’m not lying about it?” she asked archly.

I knew. With my hands moving firmly over hers, I pushed the gun to the right. This time, I was in control. Stance firm, arms steady, a quick press of my finger over hers, and BANG. The duck farthest away fell over flat.

“There are some things you can’t hide from me,” I said, chuckling at the tension that had filled her at the sound of the second shot. I’d been around enough guns and enough training exercises to know when someone was faking it, and Penelope was faking it big time. The recoil on these air guns was practically nonexistent—only someone truly uncomfortable with artillery would find them alarming. “No matter how much you might want to, your body always gives you away.”

“It does not!” she protested and yanked the gun from my grasp. “You’re making me nervous, that’s all.”

She then proceeded to take aim and fire the remaining three shots.

BANG. Miss.

BANG. Miss.

BANG. Miss by a mile.

“I wonder if I could,” I mused as she shook the gun in exasperation.

Distracted, she didn’t pick up on my meaning. “You wonder if you could what?” she asked.

I hesitated, timing my response carefully. Penelope might have become adept at physically torturing me, but I was playing a different kind of game—a mental one, an emotional one. Even more, I was playing for keeps.

I waited until her full attention was on me before clarifying. “I wonder if I really could make you nervous.”

As expected, this was one blast she didn’t recoil from. She turned on me, the gun dangling from her fingertip. “That’s not a very romantic thing to say,” she pointed out, syrupy sweet. “Why would you want me to be afraid of you?”

“I don’t,” I said—that wasn’t the kind of nervous I meant—and waited.

Just what I was waiting for, I couldn’t quite say. For Penelope to admit that she felt a fraction for me what I felt for her? For her to say I did make her nervous, that when I was around her heart raced and her blood rushed and her head was so full of ridiculous hope she could barely stand it?

Or maybe more than anything, I just wanted her to tell me the truth—about her life, about her past, about the fact that she was probably carrying stolen jewels in her pockets right now… But of course that would never happen. She didn’t trust me enough for that. I wasn’t sure she ever would.

As if to prove my point, she continued with her slow, careful seduction, refusing to respond to my gentle push for more. “Oh, but maybe I am scared of you. What with you so big and strong and manly. What’s a poor girl like me to do?”

“You could learn a little self-defense,” I said, giving in for now. “Starting with duck hunting. I don’t like the idea of you sauntering around out there unprotected.”

Her lips spread in a wide and dazzling smile—the smile had been my undoing from the start. How a person who had seen the things she’d seen and done the things she’d done could still be filled with such easy joy was one of the many mysteries I had yet to solve. “Aw, Grant. You really think I can’t take care of myself? A street rat like me?”

I knew she could take care of herself. That was part of the problem. She was self-sufficient and fearless and determined to prove it to every man, woman, and child who crossed her path. As a general rule, I found overconfident criminals to be the easiest ones to trap, but Penelope Blue was anything but easy. Her confidence, unlike that of so many others, was borne of competence, which meant she’d earned every scrap of it.

In other words, she didn’t need me. Not the way I needed her. And if she finally grew tired of stringing me along, I wanted to make damn sure she continued to keep herself as safe as possible.

“Just hand the gun over already,” I grumbled. “I’m going to teach you how to do this if it takes us all afternoon.”

The park was filled with its usual mixture of tourists and truant teenagers, but few of them were interested in the overpriced duck hunt that had been my sole plan for today’s date. Part of my plans had arisen from an honest desire to teach her how to handle a gun, but I’d have been lying if I didn’t also admit to a perverse desire to show off.

I could hardly be blamed for it. Getting the better of this woman—in life, in love, in anything—was virtually impossible. No matter what kind of a curveball I threw at her, she caught it and tossed it right back.

If I found her out in the middle of a lie? She’d keep lying until she was out again.

If I paraded her in front of a team of federal agents? She’d smile and laugh until each one was putty in her hands.

And if I told her how I felt, as though the ground was shifting underneath my feet, crumbling my previously unshakable foundation of good and bad and right and wrong? Hell. I had no idea. She might have infinite reserves of courage, but I didn’t. I wasn’t ready to hear her admit that I was nothing more than a game to her.

“All right, Agent Emerson,” she said as she handed over the gun. “Show me how this is done. Save me from the bad guys.”

I tossed the man another bill and nodded at him to set the ducks going. I waited just long enough to get a feel for the cadence of the thing—they vary the ducks’ speed with every game in an attempt to throw you off—before popping off my shots.

BANG. Thump.

BANG. Thump.

BANG. Thump.

A warm, tantalizing curl of air wrapped around my ear, causing my fourth shot to go awry. In preparation for the fifth, I could feel Penelope’s entire body, lithe and ready, by my side. Nowhere did she touch me, nowhere did she allow her long, dexterous fingers to brush against my skin, but the damage was already done. I couldn’t fucking concentrate.

“We’re not going to win any stuffed bears this way,” I warned. “I only have one more shot.”

“Then let me help,” she said in a low, beckoning voice. Before I could stop her, she assumed the position that had been mine only a few minutes earlier, her body bracing mine from behind. As if that weren’t bad enough, she nudged her leg between my thighs. My stance was impeccable, but she wanted me to suffer.

And suffer I did.

From there, she let her hands linger on my hips, holding me in place while she adjusted her posture so that every soft, round part of her rubbed against my back. As if I needed a reminder how her body felt against mine, of all the promise contained in five feet three inches of gorgeous, playful jewel thief.

“Don’t hold the gun like it’s going to bite you,” she said, echoing my orders from before. I could hear the laugh in her voice as she lifted her arms to support mine. She took her time with the task, fingers trailing up and down my forearms, her hands coming to rest on the gun in a way that had even the carnival hawker flustered. “I swear, Grant. Haven’t you ever had one of these in your hands before?”

“I can’t help it,” I said, driven to full honesty. “You make me nervous.”

That startled a laugh out of her. “Me?”

“Yes, you.” I gave up all pretense of shooting the gun. Fuck the ducks. Fuck the stuffed bear. Fuck all the people passing by, wondering at the man in shirtsleeves unable to pull the trigger and seal the deal. I whirled so that we stood face-to-face, her gaze dragged up into my own. “You have no idea how much you shake my resolve—how much you shake me.”

As always, any sign of affection—of sincerity—startled her. She tried to pull back, but by that time, I had my arms around her and held her close.

“You have more power over me than you realize,” I said. I didn’t allow my eyes to stray from hers, but I did adjust my posture so that I stood sideways, perpendicular to the duck booth. Without looking, I lifted the gun and fired off my last shot.

BANG. Thump.

“The gentleman wins a prize!” the man in the apron called, but I paid him no heed. The prize I wanted wasn’t even close to won yet.

“Good thing I know how to take care of myself, too,” I told her. “This round goes to me.”

Her eyes were big at the showy success of my shot, bigger still with the realization that I wasn’t going to let her off the hook so easy. Especially when I brought my lips to hers and claimed my victory kiss—loving the way she went pliant and welcoming at the first taste. How a woman so physically soft and yielding could be so damned hard in every other way was beyond me.

But then, a lot of things were beyond me. Including the fact that as Penelope’s mouth opened to let me in, I realized there was no way I could let her slip out of my life as stealthily as she’d slipped in.

Penelope Blue was a terrible shot and a lying thief, but she made one hell of a delightful adversary. It was almost enough to make a man not dream of all the more there could be—to make him content with what he had.

Almost.