5

THE GAME

(Eighteen Months, Thirty Days, and About Twenty-Two Hours Ago)

Finding Agent Emerson to win my bet was a lot easier than it should have been, when all was said and done.

I’d prepared myself to make a lengthy survey of the city streets, jogging past the catering company and the high-rise apartment we planned on hitting, stopping to ask various female passersby if they happened to notice a rugged god in a dark, well-cut suit walking among them.

As it was, I hadn’t had to ask a single one. Turns out that freakishly large, athletic men standing around staring at their feet were kind of an eyesore in the constant movement and noise of the city. It only took me thirty minutes to find him, situated two blocks from the apartment building, his look of deep concentration fixed on a sewer grate.

Tearing his attention away from that sewer grate was another matter entirely. By the fourth time I jaunted past him, purposefully running on the balls of my feet to maximize gluteal vibrations, I realized I was up against a man not easily swayed by bouncy females.

Huh. It seemed I would have to play a more direct game with this guard dog of ours—and I couldn’t help a smile from spreading at the thought. A direct game was going to make this so much more fun.

I stopped a few feet away from him and took my time stretching my inner thighs. It was a good pose, my roundest body parts projecting in all the right places, but not even the prospect of a carefully jutting hip elicited the desired response. In the end, I had to make my way in by clearing my throat and offering a not-so-clever, “It’s a nice sidewalk, don’t you think?”

As stupid as the words sounded once they left my mouth, they did the trick. Grant finally looked up at me, his expression one of complete surprise. For five suspended seconds, I thought I’d just made the biggest mistake of my career, not counting the time I’d sampled a nauseatingly floral perfume before crawling into a washing machine for three hours. That look on his face—a look I haven’t seen to that degree since—told tales.

And they weren’t the sort of tales a girl liked to hear on a tranquil fall afternoon like this one. Those unguarded eyes knew me by sight. That relaxed hinge of his jaw recognized me as the thief he’d been tracking for months. The perplexed pucker to his brow told me I was about to spend the rest of my life behind bars.

But all he said was, “I beg your pardon?”

His voice was softer than I expected: low but controlled, the sound of an authority figure who knows he doesn’t have to shout to be heard. I’ve since realized that’s the most dangerous kind of man to go up against in a fight. He didn’t bluster and yell the way Riker did, and he didn’t speak in terse rebukes, the way I remember my dad doing when I made an error in the middle of a job. Grant was all control and manners.

I hadn’t expected manners.

“I’ve never seen a man so intrigued by concrete before,” I said, less polite but still within the bounds of friendliness. “I’ve run past you a total of four times now, and you never once glanced up to check me out.”

The surprise faded to amusement. “Is that a fact?”

“Yes. And I thought for sure three times would do it.”

Since it appeared he wasn’t about to book me for fifty counts of conspiracy, I took a moment to appreciate him up close. From a distance, packed into a dark suit, always on the scent of something we didn’t want him to be, he really was more like a ferocious guard dog than anything else. But up close? Unf. There was nothing canine about him, and fear wasn’t my primary reaction. He was a behemoth, taller than me by at least a foot, his build not powerful so much as overpowering. He wasn’t handsome—at least, not in a clean-cut, underwear ad sort of way—but he was incredibly attractive. It’s possible for a man to be a perfectly assembled collection of model parts and invoke nothing more than a mild appreciation, like looking at a sculpture or a really nice diamond tiara. It’s equally possible for a man to boast coarse features, oversized limbs, and a rugged smile—and make a girl want to take off her clothes on the spot.

Happily, I refrained.

“How do you know I didn’t watch your ass as you ran past?” he asked, picking up my flirtation with ease. I should have been disappointed that he was sharp enough to follow along—a slow, stupid nemesis is always preferable to a fast-witted one—but all I felt was a warm feeling of pleasure. “Maybe I was being discreet.”

“You didn’t,” I said smugly and switched to stretching the other leg. “If you had, you would’ve stopped me ten minutes ago and asked for my number.”

“Maybe I’m in a relationship.”

“You’re not. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be watching my ass now.”

He laughed but didn’t relax. I only noted this because men have a universal way of dropping their shoulders and opening their stance once they realize they’re being hit on. Women probably do it, too—you can almost see the walls coming down around their hearts—but Grant’s wide shoulders remained firmly in place.

I stuck out my hand, hoping physical contact would do the trick.

“I’m Penelope,” I said, not bothering with an alias. That was one lie I’d never had any use for. I was born a thief, raised a thief, and would probably die one. A fake name wouldn’t benefit me any more than changing spots would a leopard. “Penelope Blue.”

That look of surprise moved across Grant’s face again, but he managed to quell it long enough to take my hand and shake.

It would have been pushing things to say there was a tingle of electricity, or that my life flashed before my eyes as the rough texture of his palm grazed mine, but there was no mistaking how strong his grip was. With just the flick of his wrist, he could have broken the bones in my hand, conquered me right then and there. Instead of being alarmed by his physical mastery, I felt no sense of danger. Only wonder.

This man could crush me, I thought. But he won’t.

“Grant,” he said. “Grant Emerson.”

If I’d been operating at the top of my game, my attention not so fixated on what other feats those hands might be capable of, I’d have said something outrageous and provocative to keep the flirtation going. As it was, I found myself staring down at the same sewer grate that had held his attention for so long.

“Did you drop something down there?” I asked.

“I beg your pardon?” he asked again. This time, I noticed there was almost a twang in his voice, a touch of the Southern gentleman coming out to play. I’d later learn that’s exactly what it was—his West Virginia upbringing not yet quashed by the big city. For the moment, all I felt was charmed.

“The sewer. You seemed transfixed. Did you lose your keys down there or something? Maybe I can help—I have weirdly skinny fingers.”

That was when his shoulders came down. I don’t know what I said or did to bring on the sudden transformation, but one second, he was all FBI business in his well-cut suit and linebacker stance; the next, he was a friendly, interested male I knew I’d won over.

Hopefully, it wasn’t the skinny fingers that did it. That was one fetish I wasn’t so keen to explore.

“Actually, you can help me.” He took a step back and ran an appraising gaze over my body, bringing a flush to the surface of my already heated skin. “You’re a small person.”

“Gee, thanks. The words every girl longs to hear.”

He laughed again. I liked the sound of it, deep and rich and with an almost forceful undertone, as if it made its way out of his throat whether he wanted it to or not. “My apologies. You’re small and well-formed. Is that better?”

I held up my fingers in the approximation of an inch. “Well-formed is something people use to describe a horse.”

“Your ass is top-notch?”

“Wait a minute…”

“I can say that with absolute sincerity, since I made an intense study of it every time you passed by. I thought at first you might be lost.”

Aha! So he had been watching. “How modest of you. Most men would assume I was trying to get their attention.”

“The thought did cross my mind. I also suspected you of casing the bank across the street.”

I won’t lower myself to describe how erratically my pulse leapt at that confession, but there was a definite off-the-charts moment happening inside my rib cage. There was no reason for it, since I was completely innocent for once. I hadn’t even noticed there was a bank across the street—and that kind of institution isn’t our style, anyway. Banks and vaults are way above our pay grade. Access to them is a lot more complicated than putting on a disguise and rolling up an elevator in a beer keg. Fancier, if you will. Much more my father’s style.

“I’ve always thought jogging would make an excellent excuse for that,” he added by way of explanation. “Everyone notices a beautiful woman running by, but her motives are never suspect. Not even when she goes by several times.”

It was too good an opportunity to pass up. “Does that mean you’re suspecting my motives? How astute. I’m actually here to rob you, not the bank. Stick ’em up.”

His smile started at his eyes, a crinkle of skin and a flash of humor that worked its way down to his lips. Oh, but that was a good smile, all the more so because he seemed to mean it. When Riker smiled, there were always strings attached—usually ones that pulled me places I didn’t want to go.

“Unless you’re hiding a gun inside your bra, I’d like to know how you plan on following through on that threat. Your small, well-formed body doesn’t stand a chance against me.”

My small, well-formed body was well aware of that fact. It was also tingling most unbecomingly at the prospect of a tussle with a man of his impressive…stature.

“Maybe I have an accomplice with a gun pointed at your head right now,” I said. “He’s a sniper, and he’s very good.”

“Nice try. In order to hit me at this angle, he’d have to be on the eighth floor in the bank building—which, you’ll note, is impossible, since it’s only seven stories high—or hiding inside that office undergoing renovations. Which is possible but not likely, since they’ve got an asbestos removal team in there today.”

My blank stare must have been obvious, because he chuckled and added, “Security at a national bank might be tough, but security when they’re dealing with potential mesothelioma lawsuits? Forget about it. No one’s getting in there without a hazmat suit and six levels of clearance. This is officially a snipe-free zone.”

Damn. He was better at this than I thought. Our guard dog would have to be upgraded to a wolf, at the very least.

“You seem to know an awful lot about bullet trajectories,” I noted.

“Occupational hazard. Are you flexible?”

My head whirled with his fast-paced conversation, his proximity, and the fact that those two things made it hard for me to remember what I’d come here to do.

Flirt. I was here to flirt and capture his interest, and I knew only one lie that would make that a certainty. “Why, yes. Yes, I am. I teach dance at a rec center a few blocks from here.”

One of his eyebrows lifted in pure masculine interest. “Really?”

“Would you like me to hook my knee behind my head and prove it?”

“Very much, but that’s beside the point.” He nodded at the sewer grate. “As a small person with dance teacher levels of flexibility, what would you say is the likelihood you could slip inside and crawl two blocks north of here?”

I caught his meaning instantly. Sewer lines were second only to air ducts for sneaking inside buildings undetected. If I wanted to get into that apartment building without drawing unwarranted attention, that’d be one way to do it.

Which, by the way? Gross. I’ll squeeze into a lot of unpleasant places in the line of duty, but I draw the line at anything containing human waste.

“The likelihood that I could do it? High. The likelihood that I would do it?” I gave a ladylike shudder. “There’d have to be a pretty big incentive waiting for me at the end. What kind of incentive is there, Grant Emerson, man of strange sewer questions and scary amounts of knowledge about gunfire aerodynamics?”

“That depends on what motivates you, Penelope Blue.”

It was the first time he used my full name in a mocking rhyme, as well as the first time I let him—with a smile and a pitter-patter of my heart. Ten minutes into the meeting, and he’d already been granted a right not even Riker could lay claim to.

I should have known then that I was up against a foe more dangerous than a dedicated FBI agent onto all our tricks. Oh yes. I was up against an attractive man with catastrophic levels of charm.

This was what wiser people might consider the beginning of the end.

“I suppose I might make the trek to save someone I love,” I said, feigning thoughtfulness. “Though I’d have to love them an awful lot.”

“An admirable response, but I was thinking more along the line of monetary gain.”

“I just told you I teach dance to small children for a living. If monetary gain was one of my primary life goals, I think I could have come up with a much better use for my flexibility, don’t you?”

“I wonder what kind of use that might be,” he mused, head cocked.

“Oh, you know. Running away with the circus. Pole dancing,” I said. That rakish tilt to his head proved too much for my always questionable self-restraint. “Maybe even breaking and entering.”

Well, I’d done it now. Once the truth—that slippery, seductive beast—fell out into the open, there was no taking it back. It could only sit there, waiting for one of us to pick it up again.

“Go out with me,” Grant said.

I blinked. “Um…what?”

“Go out with me.” There was more command in his voice that time, and he punctuated his statement by grabbing my hand and running his thumb over the back, as though testing to make sure I was real. “Tonight. Meet me for drinks and dinner. There’s this great Italian place about an hour upstate I’d love to take you to.”

In a fit of alarm, I tried taking my hand back, but he held it firm—proof of his physical superiority. How easy it would have been for him to twist my arm behind my back and push me to the ground, to slap me in a pair of handcuffs and haul me away.

But he didn’t, and for the first of many times to come, I wondered why. He must have had that bistro bugged earlier and overheard my entire boast to Riker that I could woo him away from the scene of the crime. There was no way he’d just make that offer on his own. He had nothing to gain from it.

Even though this outcome was exactly what I’d angled for, I released a nervous laugh. “I hardly think it’s a good idea for me to leave the city with a man who knows as much about snipers as you do. Call it maidenly reserve.”

He gave me his devastatingly powerful crinkly-eyed smile. He wasn’t the least bit put off by being put off. “Somewhere closer, then? Do you know the Whiskey Room?”

Okay, now things were getting freaky. The Whiskey Room was well-known as a favorite FBI haunt, situated as it was across the street from the New York field office.

“I’m familiar with it, yes,” I hedged.

“What if we met there instead?” He dropped my hand and lifted his fingers in a Boy Scout salute. “There’s nowhere safer to meet a perfect stranger, I swear. My coworkers and I meet there after work all the time. You’ll be surrounded by badges.”

“Badges?” Was he about to admit to being an FBI agent?

“Yeah. Want to see mine?” He didn’t wait for a response as he fished into his interior jacket pocket and flashed me the shiny gold of his authority as an upholder of the law. “I probably should have mentioned it earlier. There’s a reason I know so much about bullets and casing banks. I’m not as creepy as I seem.”

I reached out to touch the badge, though I wasn’t able to make full contact. Despite years of close calls with the law, I’d never been that close to a badge before. I was half-afraid it would burn my skin, like holy water scalding a vampire.

“Aren’t you supposed to keep it a secret?” I dropped my fingers and shoved them uncomfortably behind my back. “So, like, bad guys can’t sniff you out?”

“But then how would I impress attractive women on the street?”

“I guess it’s no worse than accidentally flashing a wallet full of hundred-dollar bills,” I allowed after only a brief moment of panic. “Or casually mentioning how hard it is for you to find condoms that fit without cutting off vital blood flow.”

“No way. Men don’t really say that kind of thing.”

“Oh, aren’t you so sweet and naive? Don’t worry. I’m suitably impressed by your credentials.”

“I also have a hard time finding condoms that fit without cutting off vital blood flow, if it helps,” he added.

In that moment, with his adorable smile and crinkled eyes pointed dead-on at me, I almost wished I was a dance teacher who had nothing but free time to cavort with dangerously attractive officers of the law. What kind of a life would that be—so ordinary, so comfortable, so sane?

Not mine, that was for sure.

“Okay, FBI Agent Grant Emerson.” I took a deep breath. This was not a moment for vague dreams or fanciful what-ifs. It was all or nothing. Go big or go home. “You won me over with that last one. Let’s go to your upstate restaurant for dinner and/or murder.”

“Really?” His smile went from adorable to lady-slaying powerful. “I can pick you up around six or so?”

“I’m not that won over. A girl always needs an escape route. How about you give me the address and I’ll take a Zipcar instead? Say, around seven?”

His eyes clouded over for the briefest moment, disappointment mingled with something darker, before he pulled out a business card and scrawled an address on the back. “You sure you aren’t going to make me drive all the way out there to sit alone at a table?” he asked. Cannily, I thought. “A trick like that might end up breaking my heart.”

“I’ll be there,” I lied. It was a tough one to get out, even for a woman like me, accustomed to half-truths and misdeeds. “I’m not so easy to get rid of. I have this way of worming into the least likely places.”

At that, he took my hand and kissed it like a knight of old. The action almost killed me on the spot, especially when he didn’t relinquish his hold right away. He peered at me over the top of my fingers instead. “I have a feeling that’s true, Penelope Blue.”

Oh man. He was rhyming again.

“And I have no reason to get rid of you just yet,” he added with a wink. “In fact, I have a feeling we’re about to become very good friends.”