What the fuck were you thinking?

Rowe’s voice repeated over and over in Royce’s head as they approached the massive Italian estate. Not only had he allowed Marc—a fucking client—to get dragged into his personal problem, but he was allowing Marc to break the law and take part in a dangerous heist. Jesus fucking Christ.

He was questioning his own sanity at this point, but then he needed to think about his mother for only a second, and he knew he’d make the same crazy choices all over again. He was not only saving his mother, but he was helping Marc right a wrong that he’d struggled with for years.

But even as he clung to that rationale, he was sure that all his efforts to prove he wasn’t a waste of skin for a human being flowed right down the drain when he’d been pushed into a corner.

A good person would have told Marc no when he came up with his scheme to help. He would have handed Marc over to another bodyguard and figured out a different plan to take care of his problem on his own.

But he didn’t, and now they were kneeling behind a low wall, heading into a situation that was almost completely unknown. Angelo had been given just enough time to make a quick pass of the estate and dig up a ten-year-old reference to the estate’s security system. They had no idea if the old bastard had upgraded his security system or had more personal security than he’d seen in the one day of watching.

A cold wind stirred and pushed through the black sweater and cargo pants he was wearing. Marc was pressed close behind him, causing the gun settled against his lower back to dig in. It was the first time he’d been armed since he’d met Marc. They’d all agreed that it would have been strange for Marc’s boyfriend to carry a weapon. He hated to admit that it felt good to have the gun on him again—like he was back in control when it was still clear that he wasn’t.

Angelo took the lead while they waited. The small, slender man moved soundlessly, as if he were more shadow than human, disappearing from sight within an instant.

The night before, when they were wrapped around each other in bed, Marc explained a very basic layout of the expansive building that ranged between two and three stories in sections. There were vast gardens and a modest in-ground pool. But the problem was the layout of the interior of the house. Marc could only remember that the library which housed the hidden painting was on the second floor. He couldn’t recall an exact route to the library. The party had been more than five years ago, and Marc apparently had attended a large number of private parties of art collectors. Lavish homes in foreign countries blurred together.

Royce stared up at the massive building. There were a couple of dim lights on around the front door and another faint glow at the back at what Marc had described to be the pool area. The majority of the windows were dark, but there were a few other soft glows that looked as if there might be a couple of lights on deeper in the house. The owner was well into his sixties, so Royce was inclined to believe that he was in his bed already.

But it wasn’t a nearly seventy-year-old man that had Royce worried. They didn’t know who else was in the house. Did the old bastard have an extensive staff living with him? Angelo had spotted only a butler, but were there more? Or worse…an extensive security team?

“Royce,” Marc whispered. He pressed closer, crowding against Royce so that he barely had to lift his voice. “This might be a bad time, but I just wanted to tell you that I’m having fun.”

Dropping his head forward, he squeezed his eyes shut and swallowed back a curse. “When we get home, I’m tying you to the bed, so I don’t have to worry about you getting into danger.”

Silence followed his growled statement, and then a hand slid along the outside of his thigh. “Promise?”

Royce barely swallowed back a groan. Now was not the time for this, but he was definitely fucking Marc’s brains out the second they were safe again. Just the idea of Marc’s wrists tied above his head, long body stretched against dark sheets, his sheets, had filled him with a desperate need. There were a lot of things that he wanted to do to Marc, to do with him, but to get to that, they had to crawl out of this mess.

A quick flash of light caught Royce’s eye, snapping him from his thoughts of Marc desperately begging for release. Angelo was signaling that he’d gotten the security system down. Marc pulled his hand away and Royce instantly missed his touch. Later…

Pulling on black ski masks and black gloves, they climbed up the small wall and quickly crossed the lawn to the side of the building where Angelo was waiting for them. The thief had knelt down in front of a pair of patio doors, working on the simple lock. The mansion looked to have been built sometime during the early nineteenth century, but Royce was no historian, and he knew he could be off by a century or two. What he could see in the relative darkness was a mix of old and small touches of modern, but the modern looked to be at least twenty to thirty years old. All things that could be quickly circumvented or overcome with minimal fuss.

The lock gave with a click, and Angelo pushed open one of the doors with a little flourish. Marc shook his head with a little sniff, still showing all signs that he was feeling threatened by Angelo’s flirty ways. Royce was looking forward to showing the man exactly how little he had to worry about when it came to Angelo.

Marc took the lead, entering the house. He pulled a small flashlight from a pocket in the bag strap slung across his chest. The bright, narrow beam of light slashed across the room, running over widely spaced furniture. The room was sparsely decorated, allowing them to safely cross without worrying about bumping into anything. Marc turned off the light again and started across the room. The rubber soles of his shoes made only the tiniest of squeaks.

Grabbing his gun from the small of his back, Royce followed behind Marc, ready to step in if he suddenly found himself faced with more security than they were expecting. Angelo closed the door and caught up with them as they reached a doorway leading into a hall. The entire house was silent. There was some faint light coming from the far end of the hall, but it was likely just a light the owner left on, so he could see enough to move around the house.

His heart pounded frantically in his chest, but his fears were all centered on Marc. He was young, had established a great life for himself. He didn’t deserve to go to jail or get shot just because he was helping Royce out of a bad spot. Royce’s life had largely been a series of bad decisions. The only good thing he could claim was accepting Rowe’s job offer.

Looking over at Marc, Royce was impressed with his squared shoulders and the steadiness of his hand as he flicked the flashlight on very briefly to check the hallway before choosing to go right. Whatever fears he might have had about breaking into the house were now gone, or at the very least, packed away so that he could do this job.

Marc led the way down one hallway and then another. He’d pause here and there before making a decision. He never made a noise or looked over his shoulder at Royce for advice. After a couple of minutes, they’d made their way to the main foyer and a wide, white marble and gilt staircase that wrapped up to the second floor. There were more windows, letting in light from the front of the house, revealing hints of detailed frescos on the walls and marble accents that were likely centuries old. There wasn’t much in the way of furniture or other paintings in the house, but Royce was willing to bet the old man was spending his wealth to keep up the massive structure and protect its unique history.

At the top of the stairs, Marc stopped, his entire body frozen as he looked one way and then the other. He shifted, moving toward the right and then he stopped, looking left. Royce listened to his breathing start to speed up. He didn’t remember. He wasn’t sure which way to go. Reaching out, he put a hand on Marc’s shoulder and squeezed. Tense muscles under his fingers slowly relaxed, and Marc gave a curt nod before heading to his left.

They moved slower now, halting with every creak of the floor or sigh of the old house settling in place. Minutes ticked by before Marc finally breathed a sigh of relief as he motioned for them to follow him into a room off the main hall. Marc and Royce flicked on their flashlights. The bright lights splashed over tall shelves covered in books. A large leather sofa was in one corner and a pair of leather wingback chairs was in another. A massive globe sat in the middle of the room with shining gold accents and a heavy wood stand.

But it was the painting over the fireplace that had his attention. It looked like something from one of the impressionists. Lots of soft colors.

“That’s the painting you were looking for, right?” he whispered.

“Nope.”

“What? Are you shitting me?” Royce demanded in a harsh whisper. He hurried across the room. “Is there another library?”

“Right library. Wrong painting.”

Royce watched him. Despite it being the wrong painting, Marc didn’t sound concerned. He walked over to the globe in the center of the room.

“Can we just take that one? It looks famous,” Angelo said.

“It’s a fake.”

“How do you know? There’s not enough light.”

“It’s Apples and Oranges by Paul Cézanne. The real one is on display at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris.” Standing in front of the globe, Marc turned it slowly round and round, looking for something with his flashlight clenched between his teeth. Royce joined him as he stopped on Europe. He gave Royce a little wink as he placed his thumb over Poland and pushed.

A soft, sliding noise drew their gaze back to the Cézanne over the mantle. The painting dropped back a couple of inches into the wall and then moved to the left. A dim light revealed a deeper-set painting hidden. An old portrait of a young man. The lost painting by Old Master Raphael.

“Whoa…” Angelo exhaled.

“And that’s real.”

“Get it down, and let’s get out of here,” Royce said, heading over to the door. He positioned himself so that he was still hidden in the shadows but could keep watch down the hall while also still keeping Angelo and Marc in eyesight.

The house remained quiet—the only noise coming from Angelo as he climbed carefully onto the mantle and worked on taking out any security system attached to the priceless painting. Marc remained on the ground but close by with a small pouch of tools to assist.

Royce kept his glances back brief, trying not to think too much about how easily Angelo and Marc worked together. When he and Marc had returned to the bed and breakfast, they had been more interested in getting their clothes off and never got around to talking about how Marc knew the thief. He didn’t actually think that Marc had done anything like this before. It was only jealousy nipping at him. He didn’t want to share Marc with anyone, even someone from his past. Not that it made any sense. Did they really have a chance at something? Their lives were so different.

And yet…stealing a priceless lost painting from an elegant estate in Tuscany was a unique bonding experience, right?

Royce didn’t realize he’d let himself get distracted until he heard a faint clatter across the hardwood floor. Sort of like clicking. He looked over his shoulder to see Angelo pulling the framed painting from the hidden cove and handing it carefully down to Marc. The sound wasn’t coming from within the room but down the hall…and it was getting closer.

Tightening his hand around the gun, Royce leaned closer to the open doorway, straining to hear. To make sense of the noise. And then it finally hit him. Fuck.

He hurried over to where Marc and Angelo were kneeling on the floor around the painting.

“Does Schmid have a dog?”

“What?” Angelo whispered back.

“A dog. Does Schmid have a dog? I think I heard nails on a hardwood floor.”

Angelo said something under his breath that Royce couldn’t quite catch, but it sounded like swearing regardless of the language. “I’ve got it. Help him.”

While Royce knelt down in Angelo’s spot, the other man took up Royce’s post by the door. He heard nothing for more than a minute. He handed Marc a tool each time he requested one and kept the light from the tiny flashlight steady while Marc worked to carefully free the painting from the frame. During the day, Royce had looked up a description of the painting on the Internet and wasn’t exactly reassured by what he found. According to estimates, Raphael’s painting had been completed more than five hundred years ago on a wood panel rather than canvas as Royce had expected. The age of the painting forced Marc to work carefully to protect it as much as possible.

The idea of his uncle ever getting his hands on this incredibly rare work of art turned his stomach. It belonged in a museum for its protection and care, so it could be enjoyed by the entire world. Not just one evil, power-hungry man.

When they returned to the US, he would work with Gidget to make sure that she had a safe way to deliver an anonymous tip to Interpol regarding the painting’s new location. He might be forced to hand Raphael’s work over to his uncle, but it was not staying with the man. It would be returned to the Polish museum, and no one would ever know that Marc was involved.

The soft clicking he’d heard earlier grew louder. He knew without a doubt that the sounds were nails on the wood floor, and it was definitely more than one dog. Shifting the flashlight to his left hand, he snatched up his gun again. He had no desire to shoot a dog, but he would do whatever he must to keep Marc safe.

Angelo stepped back away from the open doorway as the first little white puffball of fur came into view. He’d expected something large and angry like a Doberman pinscher or a Rottweiler—a true guard dog. Not…

“Holy shit! He’s got bichon frises,” Marc whispered with a soft laugh.

Six of them to be exact. And they loved Angelo. Or rather, they loved the little treats he was pulling out of his pocket and dropping on the floor near the center of the room. The thief was whispering to them in an endless stream of nonsense baby talk, keeping them fed so that they couldn’t suddenly start barking.

“What the fuck are they?”

“Bichon frises. One actually just won the Westminster Dog Show this year. Fun, playful little dogs.”

Royce continued to stare at Marc, surprised that he’d been able to supply that information. He didn’t realize he’d been staring until Marc shook his head and said tartly, “Not all of us have hot dates lined up for Valentine’s Day. Some of us stay home and catch the dog show.”

He smiled at Marc and for a heartbeat, he forgot about the fact that they were in Oscar Schmid’s Tuscan estate, stealing a priceless painting that had previously been stolen by the Nazis. He forgot about his mother and the sibling trying to kill Marc. There was just a man kneeling opposite him with a tender heart. It was on the tip of his tongue to ask if Marc would watch the dog show with him next year. He didn’t give a damn about the show, but he wanted the promise of being with him for Valentine’s Day.

Angelo appeared between them before Royce could speak. “How’s it going?”

“Where are the dogs?” Royce demanded. He twisted around to see six little white fluffs stretched out on the floor.

“Sleeping. I drugged the treats.”

“You knew there were dogs?”

“No, but I always plan for them.” He grinned up at Royce. “Not only gorgeous—but smart.”

Royce started back toward the door while Angelo resumed helping Marc with the frame, but he didn’t get far when car headlights splashed across the front of the house, sweeping broadly through the room. Swearing silently to himself, Royce hurried over to the window and watched a sedan pull around to the back. Someone had returned, which meant one or more persons wandering through the house.

“How close are you?”

Marc shook his head, not looking up. “I need at least another five minutes. The painting is incredibly old and delicate. If I try to rush, I could damage it beyond repair.”

“If I’m not back when you get done, I want you to leave and go straight to the plane.”

Marc’s head snapped up with those instructions. “What?”

“Angelo, get it done.”

The thief nodded. Marc simply stared at him, his handsome face hidden by the damn mask. It was too dark to clearly see his eyes, but he could feel the worry. If something happened to Royce, he knew that Marc would make sure that his mother was rescued.

Stepping over the dogs, Royce hurried down the hall and along the curving staircase to the first floor. He paused in the main foyer, listening for any sounds of the newcomer. The car was parked in the rear, so it was likely the person would use one of the back entrances. Pulling on more than a hundred hours of training with two ex-Rangers, Royce silently moved through the house while keeping low and sticking to the heaviest shadows. The training helped to calm his mind and slow his rapid pulse. Rowe made sure that his men knew how to handle tense, high-stakes situations.

As he neared the end of the hall, he heard a door open and close before a bright light flicked on. He paused, crouched low against the wall, staring at the large patch of yellow light spilling across the parquet floor. There were no voices coming from the room, and it sounded as if there was only one set of footsteps.

Edging closer to the doorway, Royce peeked around the corner to find a large, broad-shouldered man moving around a kitchen. There was a bottle in a bag and another bag that looked to contain some takeout. Apparently, Schmid’s bodyguard had popped out for a drink and dinner, leaving his employer briefly vulnerable.

With a grin, Royce straightened and lifted his gun as the man turned his back to Royce and started toward the counter with the food. Exhaling, he squeezed the trigger. A loud puff of air was the only sound as the gun shot the tranquilizer dart across the room. The man cried out in pain as the dart embedded in the back of his neck. Royce chambered a second dart as he watched the big man swat at the air like he was shooing away a bee or wasp until his stubby fingers landed on the dart. He pulled it out and seemed to stare at it for a second.

Royce shoved his gun into the holster at the small of his back as he rushed forward. Soundlessly, he slipped into the kitchen behind the slumped bodyguard and wrapped his right arm around the guy’s neck. Grasping his left bicep with his right hand, he squeezed, cutting off the man’s airway and closing off the blood flow to his brain. The man attempted to struggle for all of three seconds, but Royce had the rear naked choke hold locked in. Between that and the tranquilizer, the bodyguard didn’t have a chance.

Lowering the man to his knees, Royce looked around at his face to see his eyes rolling up into his head. He was out cold.

Royce weighed his options as he glanced around the kitchen. He didn’t want to leave the man facedown in the kitchen for his employer to find. That would raise too many questions and possibly have him running straight to the library to check the painting. They needed as much time as possible before discovery. The bodyguard was far too heavy for him to heft around the room silently. But Royce could slide him…

With a grin, Royce pushed the unconscious man onto his ass and slid him over so that he was leaning back against a set of cabinets. He then grabbed the bottle of what looked to be whiskey and a glass. He splashed some whiskey in the glass and set it by the guy’s hand, while the bottle was put on the other side of his body. If he was found, Schmid would likely think the asshole passed out on the kitchen floor drunk. Might not be too far of a stretch since he’d left his employer’s home in the middle of the night.

Before leaving the kitchen, he scooped up the dart the bodyguard dropped and quietly headed back to the library, where he found Angelo returning the empty frame to the hidden cove. Marc hit the button on the globe again, sliding the fake Cézanne back into place.

“Ready?”

“Very,” Marc sighed. He snatched up a square, padded bag, sliding the strap across his chest.

They filed back out of the house and across the lawn toward their cars. It was only when the Raphael was secured in the Porsche that Royce felt that he could finally breathe. Sure, there had been six dogs and a roaming bodyguard, but it had gone off relatively easy.

“You guys are pretty good at this,” Angelo said, twirling his mask on one finger as he relaxed against the car. “You know if you ever get tired of the art gig and guarding bodies—”

“Don’t even finish the thought, Angelo,” Marc snapped. “Now that it’s over, all I want to do is go back to the bed and breakfast and throw up.” He pulled off his mask and flashed Royce a weak smile. “Sorry.”

“Nothing to apologize for,” Royce murmured. Marc had held it together brilliantly through all the stress, and he showed all the signs of coming down from the adrenaline rush. “I’ll be right there with a cold cloth.”

“Ugh. You two,” Angelo groaned. He pushed away from the Porsche and headed to the little black BMW he’d driven. “I’ll call when I’m back in London. We can go dancing.”

Royce shook his head at the man. Angelo was definitely different. He seemed to live life as if it was one long party. Royce liked to have a little fun from time to time, but it was the man standing on the other side of the car who promised nights cuddled on the couch as they argued over which movie to watch or where to order dinner from that held his undivided attention.

“Plane is waiting,” Marc said.

“Let’s go home.”

Marc’s smile grew, but Royce couldn’t bring himself to return it. Marc’s place wasn’t home, and his uncle was trying very hard to destroy what little he still had that made him think of home—his mother. He just prayed the risks they took in the middle of Tuscany paid off.