7

THE PARTNERSHIP

There’s an apology gift waiting on the kitchen counter when I wake up the next morning. It’s not a bouquet of flowers (which I have little use for), and it’s not jewelry (which, oddly enough, is something I don’t wear much of). The cobbler’s children don’t have any shoes, and the jewel thief sticks to simple, understated pieces. That’s how I prefer it.

Grant knows this about me, which is why I’m delighted to find a pink bakery box with my name scrawled across the top instead. Donuts are a universal peace offering, and they’re one I gladly—and voraciously—accept. There’s nothing like criminal intrigue to get a girl’s appetite going.

Going too well, apparently. I’m holding a half-empty box and considering how to arrange the remaining pastries to make it look like I only ate a dainty few when Grant sneaks up behind me.

“Hello, wife,” he murmurs into my neck. It’s a smooth move rendered even smoother when he tightens his grip to catch my spasm of surprise. I seriously need to put a bell on that man one of these days. “Have I ever told you how much I enjoy waking up to your beautiful face?”

“Jesus, Grant. Were you hiding in a corner this whole time?”

His chuckle is a warm flutter of breath against my skin. “Do you mean did I witness you inhale those three maple bars? No. I was in the bedroom.”

I bump him with my ass in mock annoyance, but his hands slide down to my hips and hold me there. It’s the perfect position to have me pinned between a rock and a hard place—namely, him and the kitchen counter. Most of the rocks and hard places in my life include Grant in some form or another, but at least this one comes with a kiss that takes my breath away.

He starts, as he so often does, with my neck. I’ll never know what it is about that part of a woman’s anatomy that interests him so, but from the way he plants a line of soft kisses along the slope of my shoulder and up to my jawline, it’s clear he intends to take his time—and enjoy himself in the process.

He’s not the only one. Most of Grant’s body is a solid wall of sinew and bone, difficult to break and hard to deny, but his lips have always been incredibly soft. They’re also as insistent as the rest of him, growing increasingly demanding the further north he goes. By the time he reaches my lips, he’s tilting my face to meet his mouth with my own.

“Mmm,” he groans as his tongue sweeps against mine. “You taste like maple and sugar. I should get you breakfast more often.”

More arousing words have never been spoken, and I couldn’t move now even if I wanted to. One of his hands holds me in place, grinding me against the counter. The other grips my chin so he can continue his assault unabated. His mouth is hot and demanding, his tongue stroking until I’m grateful that he’s holding me up.

I might dissolve otherwise.

If this man ever learned how much power he has over me, I might be in real trouble. He breaks me down and holds me up at the same time. He makes it impossible for me to live with or without him.

I swear I’d hate him if his kisses didn’t feel so damn good.

“How was your evening?” he asks. He spins me to face him, murmuring the question against my lips. “Did you discover any more crimes you’d like to convince me you didn’t commit? Maybe you could break into a bank to try and prove it to me.”

“Ha, ha. Very funny.” I weave my fingers through the silky strands of his hair and nip playfully at his jawline. It’s my favorite place to leave telltale marks of affection, since it forces him to keep his scruff a little scruffier than usual to hide it. “I’ll have you know that sort of plan doesn’t come up with itself. It took us a long time to decide on the best way to crack your office.”

“You’ve always been good at your job.” He speaks mostly to the slope of my shoulder, which he’s exposing inch by careful inch. But his hands—and mouth—stop before he frees so much as the swell of a breast.

My breath catches with impatience and desire, my body straining for him to touch it again.

But of course, he doesn’t.

“Wait a minute,” he says. “Did you say the best way to crack my office?”

Despite the frustrated fizzle building between my legs, I have to laugh. “Well, you wouldn’t want us to use the worst way, would you? Have some pride in our workmanship.”

He grips me by my naked shoulders, the familiar look of exasperated amusement settling over his expression. “Like hell I will. How many ways are there?”

“Off the top of my head? I’d say about a dozen.”

“Write them down,” he says. Much to my dismay, he drops his seduction and snatches the pad of paper we use for grocery lists. “I want all twelve. In elaborate detail. Don’t leave anything out.”

“Hey, some of those are trade secrets.”

“Not anymore.” One hand steers me to a stool; the other grabs a pen and points it at me. It’s not exactly how I wanted to spend my morning, but what’s a girl to do? When Grant switches to business mode, there’s not much in this world that can sway him.

Seriously. He’ll stand there, aroused and with a look of intense longing in his eyes, frustrated and surly for hours, before he’ll budge so much as an inch.

“You know I can’t betray the team like that,” I say, though I take the pen and nibble on the end with feigned thoughtfulness. I’m not about to tell him that preying on his natural suspicions was all we could come up with. Gotta keep the mystery alive. “Riker would kill me. He knows guys who would pay top dollar for this kind of information.”

“You’re not getting up from that chair until you start writing.”

“Or you’ll do what?” I ask archly.

“Never bring you baked goods again.”

That’s not a threat I take lightly. “Fine. If you’re going to be mean about it…”

To assuage the domineering beast in my kitchen, I jot down random and wholly unlikely scenarios, like driving through the front glass of the building with the Batmobile or getting plastic surgery so I look identical to Cheryl. I cover the paper with my free hand so he can’t see what I’m writing, hoping he’ll take the hint.

When he doesn’t move away, I turn to him with a glare. “I can’t confess my sins while you’re hovering over me. Get thee to the coffeemaker, husband, and make yourself useful.”

He plants a kiss on the back of my neck and mutters something about ungrateful temptresses, but it does the trick. Mostly, anyway. Before he gets too involved in the process of transforming coffee beans into miracles, he pauses and watches me with an unreadable expression.

“You’ll talk to me next time, right?” he asks. “Instead of going to Riker and Jordan to set up a mass-scale invasion? We’ll have a good old-fashioned conversation between husband and wife?”

I’m reluctant to agree to those terms without an addendum, which says a lot more about me than it does him. That mass-scale invasion was the only interesting thing I’ve done in months.

“That depends,” I say carefully. “Are you going to let me help catch the Peep-Toe Prowler?”

A perfectly readable expression comes over his face then.

“I saw my dad yesterday,” I say in an attempt to stop his outburst before it begins. “I visited him at his hotel.”

“Why do I get the feeling I’m not going to like where this is headed?”

“He wasn’t there alone. He’s got a roommate.”

I pause and wrinkle my nose. Now that I think about it, there wasn’t any sign of Tara putting down roots. She’s not a messy person, at least not to my recollection, but I didn’t see a single suitcase or article of her clothing. Not even a discarded glass with a lipstick print on the rim. There’s always a chance she was there for a booty call—which, gross—but her stay didn’t look like a prolonged one.

“At least, I think she’s his roommate,” I amend. “She could have been stopping by for a visit.”

Grant is quick enough to catch the implication, and he releases a low whistle. “You’re kidding. Tara’s back in town?”

I nod, feeling smug and guilty at the same time. The former comes from a rare sense of euphoria at knowing something Grant doesn’t, but I can’t help feeling like I’m betraying Tara in the process.

Ugh. I hope this isn’t going to be a thing—having actual human emotions for that woman.

“She didn’t want me to say anything to you about it. But then, I’m a very loving and law-abiding wife, so what else could I do?” I’m not sure I care to hear his answer, as loving and law-abiding aren’t two qualities anyone would accuse me of having in abundance, so I follow up with the part of my visit with Tara that’s troubling me. “Is Christopher really your boss?”

The sharp turn of Grant’s head my way is all the confirmation I need. “She told you that?”

“Among other things. She didn’t confess to the crime, though, if that’s what you’re hoping. Of course, if you’d let me help with the investigation, I might be able to coerce more information out of her. She mentioned wanting to have lunch next week. What do you think that’s about?”

I’m genuinely curious to hear Grant’s answer, since he has experience dealing with Tara and might have insight into the dark and twisted inner workings of her mind. Unfortunately, he dismisses my question with a wave of his hand. As an only child who’s the shining gold apple of his mother’s eye, Grant doesn’t understand the complex hate-hate relationship one can have with a close relative.

“Do you know how long she’s been in town?” he asks.

“No, but I’d be happy to find out for you. Anything else you’d like while I’m at it? Her whereabouts last night? What size shoe she wears? Ooh, do you want us to sneak in and ransack my dad’s place to find evidence? Riker has this new grappling hook he’s been dying to try.”

My offer goes unheeded. From the way Grant begins pacing across the kitchen floor, all thoughts of coffee forgotten, I get the feeling it’s going to be another long-night-at-work sort of day.

“I don’t think she’s sloppy enough to show herself to you if she’s the Prowler,” he muses, mostly to himself. “She must have known you’d come to me, or at least that I’d find out through the grapevine. But then, that could have been her goal from the start—to throw me off balance. You Blue women have a tendency to do that.”

“Excuse me. Don’t lump me in the same category as that she-witch.”

“We’ll have to put a detail on her, of course, but if she’s staying with Warren, that could be tricky. Dammit. He operates on a much bigger budget than we do. He’ll pick up on any electronic surveillance the second it goes live, and there’s no way we could get a guy placed on the hotel staff without him knowing about it.”

I raise my hand. “Or—and I’m just throwing this out there—you could have me do it.”

He stops pacing to stare at me. “You?”

“Yes, me. I don’t know if you’re aware of this, but I can come and go inside that hotel without raising any alarms.” I drop my voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “Don’t tell anyone at the Bureau, but Warren Blue is my father.”

For the briefest moment, I think it’s going to work. Grant rubs his jawline, head tilted as he works through the pros and cons of letting me play along.

Determined to see the pros win, I add, “Unless you’re afraid Christopher won’t allow it because of my past? I’m sure I could convince him I’ve changed. I could talk to him, tell him how much joy it would bring me to see Tara clapped up in irons…”

At the mention of Christopher’s name, the door is slammed shut with a metaphorical bang. “The less you have to do with that man, the better,” Grant says. “The answer is no.”

“No is such a strong word, don’t you think?”

Even though it’s wise to tread lightly, patriarchal decrees have never settled well with me. In fact, a large part of the reason I fell in love with Grant is because he’s always treated me as an equal. An annoying, criminally minded equal he’d often like to strangle, but an equal nonetheless.

“There’s this funny thing inside my skull called a brain, and it wants to do its own thing every now and then,” I say. “Besides, it’s not illegal for me to visit my father, is it?”

“Penelope…”

“And it’s not out of the question that those visits might occasionally include my stepmother, right?”

“It’s like you don’t even hear me when I speak.”

“Oh, I hear you all right. I just don’t listen.” I cross the kitchen to where he’s standing and wrap my arms around his waist. It’s like hugging a statue—an angry statue—but I stay in place until some of the stoniness crumbles away. “I won’t do anything to jeopardize your case, I promise. I’ll spend some time with her, ask a few questions, that sort of thing. If nothing else, it’ll keep me out of trouble for a few days. Isn’t that what you want?”

My light, teasing manner is intended to soothe the angry beast, bring out his playful side, but Grant’s reaction is oddly serious.

“What I want, my love, is for you to be happy,” he says.

I blink up at him, startled. “But I am happy.”

“Are you? Are you really?”

My arms fall from his waist, and I step back as if struck. It’s a simple question, and all it requires is a simple answer.

Yes. Absolutely. Couldn’t be better, thanks.

But we promised to work on that honesty thing, and it seems like cheating to give up after less than twenty-four hours. I mean, I’m not unhappy, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t miss the life I left behind. Sometimes, I’ll see a piece of jewelry in a store window, catch sight of a gold watch glinting on someone’s wrist, and the urge to take it is so strong, it overpowers everything I know and am. I miss the plotting and planning. I miss the adrenaline high. I miss feeling like I’m good at something.

No, scratch that. I miss feeling like I’m great at something.

There it is, that honesty he’s asking for. It lands in the center of my chest with a soft whump.

I was great at being a jewel thief. I was great at it and I loved it and I’d give almost anything to feel that way again. Unfortunately, there’s no way to tell Grant without breaking his heart. How do you admit to your husband that the thing you gave up for him, the part of yourself you buried and tucked away in order for your marriage to work, might be the only thing in the world that makes life worth living?

Easy. You don’t.

“Of course I’m happy,” I say, and it sounds so convincing, I almost believe it. “I have everything a girl could ask for—food, shelter, a husband who regularly brings home donuts. I’m just restless, that’s all. It’s hard work, sitting at home all day while you’re out saving the world.”

Grant’s face is back to its usual handsome, unreadable façade, so I have no idea whether or not he buys it. He does, however, unbend. “I can’t stop you from seeing Tara, but that doesn’t mean I like it,” he says.

“I’ll be careful.”

“And I’ll have to start my own official investigation into her.”

“Of course. But you should probably know—she said something as I was leaving, something that felt off, even for her. She wanted me to give Chris her love the next time I see him. I thought she was just pretending to know him to get under my skin—you know how she is—but she did know he was your boss.”

He doesn’t respond. Silence isn’t my favorite reaction from Grant, so I push harder. Thinking of last night’s phone call from Christopher, of how odd it felt after spending so much time under the shadow of Simon’s hatred, I joke, “There’s not a chance he’s working with Tara, is there? Like as a double agent?”

Grant finally reacts, and that spark of anger I saw in him before—that cold calculation as he prepared to take Christopher out—is back.

“Write down everything she said,” he says, ripping off the list of breaking-into-the-FBI plans without even glancing at it. “Don’t leave anything out.”

My eyes widen as he once again thrusts the pen in my hand, this time without the sense of humor.

“Holy crap. He’s a double agent, isn’t he?”

Instead of answering, Grant makes an urgent scribbling motion, his lips pressed together.

With a face like that, there’s nothing left for me to do but write—and, Lord help me, give in to a surge of excitement so strong, I have to suppress a smile for fear he’ll think I’ve cracked. Forget loneliness. Forget boredom.

My husband is in trouble, and he needs my help. It’s almost like being alive again.