Wicked Intentions(33)

She gathers herself, inhaling and sitting up straighter in the chair, then leans back and folds her arms over her chest. “Fine. Let’s hear your plan.”

It sounds like a challenge, like she’s already decided whatever I’m gonna say will fail big time, so of course I get more pissed off, even though she just told me to can it.

“My plan,” I shout, “is to let him know I’ve got the Hope Diamond, and if he wants it, he’s gonna have to meet with me, and when he does, the FBI’s gonna swoop in and bust his ass, and then he’s off for a nice long soak in a sensory deprivation chamber before bein’ interrogated by a bunch of agency spooks who get off on roughin’ guys up as much as he gets off on sellin’ little girls into sexual slavery!”

My fevered rant is met with a cavernous, icy silence, timed by the hollow ticking of the clock on the wall. Then, in a voice an executioner might use to call up his next victim to the gallows, Mariana says, “Repeat the part about the Hope Diamond again? The part where you said you have it?”

We stare at each other with open hostility, like pistoleros in a Mexican standoff. I wonder if the vein pulsing in my temple is in imminent danger of bursting, it’s throbbing so hard.

“Yeah,” I say gruffly. “I’ve got it. The real one.” Acidly sarcastic because I’m bent by her reaction—I was expecting gratitude and got attitude—I add, “Surprise.”

Her jaw works like she’s chewing on something that’s really, really tough to swallow. Saddle leather, maybe. And I’ve never seen a pair of brown eyes glow so fucking bright, like they’re lit from within by hellfire.

With perfect control, her voice Arctic cold, she says, “And how, may I ask, did that come about?”

If I were a smarter man, I’d probably be getting real nervous right about now, but I’m obviously not that bright a bulb, because all I’m getting is more and more pissed. “It came about,” I repeat mockingly, “when I asked the guy I know who owns it if I could borrow it to snare a snake.”

She does this thing that brings to mind a cartoon tea kettle right before it explodes. All the shaking and rattling, bolts popping off like popcorn, steam escaping, sounds like train whistles and splitting metal screeching in the air…yeah, that’s what my girl starts to do, only it’s a helluva lot more intense.

“I planned that job for a week,” she says, rising from her chair, her voice shaking, her eyes flaming incinerator hot. “I lived in a shitty, cockroach-infested motel room for seven days, working twenty hours a day on research and logistics, listening to junkies tripping and hookers howling through fake orgasms and homeless guys fighting over cigarette butts they found in the street. I sweated every detail, had nightmares about what would happen if I failed, risked my neck breaking into that museum.”

Her voice rises to a shout that could disrupt flight paths with its thundering vibrations. “And the whole time you had the diamond?”

She takes a step toward me.

I’ve stared the grim reaper down a hundred times in as many different ways, yet the look in her eyes still makes me take a step back.

“In my defense,” I say placatingly, hands held up, “we weren’t on speaking terms at the time. You’d ditched me again, remember? Sheets out the window? Vanishing act? Any of this ringing a bell?”

“Oh, I hear ringing bells all right, cowboy, and they’re tolling for you.”

I get that’s some kind of reference to death from a Hemingway novel, but can’t remember specifically which one. Not that it matters, because she’s advancing like an M1 assault tank, and I’m about to get ripped a new asshole. Among other things.

“Honey, now stay calm—”

“Too late. That ship has sailed. Now we’re taking a nice, long cruise on the SS Cut A Bitch. Guess who’s the bitch? I’ll give you a hint: it’s not me.”

My laugh sounds nervous. “Jesus. And I thought I was temperamental.”

“Oh, smart. Insults and sarcasm are a great choice right now. Just keep digging that hole, cowboy.” Mariana nods slowly, her eyes pinwheeling in full serial killer mode. “Because I’m about to shove you over the edge and bury you in it.”

She’s still advancing, I’m still retreating, and I’m starting to sweat.

I had no idea that five and a half feet of female could be so terrifying.

Maybe she’s about to get her period?

In fear for their life, my testicles scream at me in no uncertain terms that I shouldn’t make that observation aloud. Instead, I start to toss out rationalizations like a nervous zookeeper might toss raw meat into the alligator moat, hoping to pacify all the snapping, ravenous teeth.

“It’s not like I could waltz into the fleabag motel and interrupt your planning! Knock, knock, who’s there, it’s your kinda-sorta boyfriend who you keep runnin’ out on! Hey, look, shiny object, you don’t have to hit the museum after all!”

“That’s exactly what you could’ve done!” she retorts hotly, steam billowing from her ears.

“You ran out on me!”

“You crossed an ocean to find me!”

“You needed time to miss me!”

She rears back with an expression of shock and horror, like I just shoved a big, rotting rat corpse under her nose. “What?”

At least she’s stopped advancing.

In my best macho-dude-who-is-NOT-intimidated-by-his-woman impersonation, I fold my arms over my chest, brace my legs apart, and peer at her down my nose.

“You heard me,” I say, then exhale in annoyance, wishing I didn’t sound like somebody’s elderly, prissy aunt.

Birdlike, Mariana cocks her head. “You wanted me to miss you?”

I narrow my eyes at her suspiciously rational tone. “Well…yeah.”

“Why?”

Now the heat crawling up my neck is embarrassment. Trying to maintain a shred of masculine dignity, I say stiffly, “I wasn’t sure if you would.”

When she just stands there staring at me in confounded silence, I figure the cat’s already out of the bag, so I might as well go for broke. “So, did you?”

“I don’t know,” she says, sounding thoughtful. “Is that what you call it when you think about someone every second of every day, dream about him every night, know without a doubt you’ll never experience anything quite as wonderful as the way he made you feel? When you ache that it’s over, yet still feel privileged to have experienced it anyway?”

I have to swallow before I answer, because someone has shoved a rock down my throat. “Yes.”

Her smile is so beautiful it could end wars. “Then I definitely didn’t miss you.”

That rumbling sound echoing through the kitchen is the growl emanating from my chest. It only serves to piss me off even more that hearing it makes her smile grow wider.

“And if you want me to decide I like you again and start telling you the truth, you better count me in on any plan you have regarding Capo, and tell me everything from here on out,” she says, full of sass and tartness. “Including,” she adds when I open my mouth to talk, “any other things I’ve been instructed to steal that you already have in your possession.”

My eyes narrow to slits. “You better sweeten that demand with a kiss, woman.”

She lifts her chin and looks at me the way one might look at a piece of debris in the gutter that fell off a passing garbage truck. “You’ll get your kiss when I get my promise.”

My brows shoot up my forehead. “You think you can blackmail me?”

“Yes, Ryan,” she replies with supreme confidence, a queen addressing her lowly subject. “That’s exactly what I think. Now, do you want your kiss or not?”

“I’ve negotiated with terrorists before, you know.”

“You’re calling me a terrorist?”

“I’m calling your bluff.”

“I’m not bluffing.”

“Oh, yeah?” I rub my chin and give her a long and lingering once-over, calculating the odds of being stabbed depending on what I say next. There’s a butcher’s block of knives on the counter to her left that I’m pretty sure she’s been eyeballing during this conversation.

“So you don’t care if you ever kiss me again? You can totally live without my mouth on yours?” A hint of a smile lifts the corners of my lips. “Or any other parts of your body?”

Her cheeks faintly darken with color. Her chin lifts another inch in the air. “That’s right.”

I chuckle. “You used to be a better liar, darlin’. But okay. You’re on.”

She blinks, a little frown forming between her eyebrows. “I’m on?”

I shrug, turn back to the stove, and start to scrape out the burned bacon from the frying pan into the sink. Whistling cheerfully, I reach under the counter for the dish soap, then proceed to wash the frying pan, taking my time to scrub off all the little black bits, one ear trained behind me for a different kind of whistle, the sound the edge of a knife makes as it slices through the air toward the tender space between my shoulder blades.

That sound doesn’t come. By the time I’m finished with the pan, Mariana has settled into a chair at the table, legs crossed, fingers tapping, searing my face off with her eyes.