“Let’s do it.”
He took his eyes off the road long enough to turn to her. “Do what?”
Her eyes were bright. “Turn the tables on them.”
“You’re kidding, right?”
She shook her head, color rising in her cheeks. She was eager and excited and completely beautiful, and her energy captivated him. “It’s perfect. We’ll pretend like we’re dating. And then we’ll arrange to do all these family things.”
“Pretend we’re dating,” he repeated.
“Sure. They’ll be thrown together over and over. Eventually they’ll crack. I know they will. I saw how they were looking at each other at the party.”
“Why not justactuallydate?”
She turned away, facing out the side window, her finger tapping on the window control. After a few minutes she lowered the window a tiny bit and thefresh, cool ocean air blew in. “No illusions, remember. No strings. No commitments.” She turned to him. “You agreed. Remember?”
“I remember. Things can change.”
“No. That’s not what I’m looking for with you.”
With you. Her words twisted in his gut. “Why?”
Her eyes darkened. “Because I want a fresh start. I need one. Hell, I deserve one. And you’ll always see me as a thief. You know my secret, and there’s no way around that.”
“I’m not proposing marriage, Mel. I’m simply suggesting we date. See how this thing between us pans out. Because thereissomething between us, sweetheart. No matter how hard you try to deny it.”
“I’m not denying it,” she said. “I’m just saying we can’t go there. I can’t go there.”
He fought the urge to bang his head against the steering wheel. The woman exasperated him. “How can you ever get involved with some other guy if you’re going to keep secrets from him?”
“That’s not your problem.”
Her words hit him with the force of a punch, and he turned to face her. “Dammit, Mel, have I ever looked at you like you were a thief?”
She met his gaze dead-on. “Of course you have, Kyle. Or have you already forgotten why you wanted to hire me in the first place?”
And then, because she was absolutely right, Kyle couldn’t do anything more than shut up and drive.
* * *
MEL CROUCHEDin the shrubbery, her binoculars trained on the Bryant house as she tried not to think about dating Kyle or sleeping with Kyle or anything at all about Kyle. Unfortunately, he was sitting in a Jeep Grand Cherokee not twenty yards away, and even with that distance between them, she could still feel his presence and she sure as hell wanted to feel his touch.
By they time they’d traveled ten miles up the Pacific Coast Highway, the silence between them had dissipated and they’d agreed to turn the tables on their grandparents. Which meant that Mel was now officially dating Kyle Radley in a purely pretend sort of way. And itwasonly pretend. Mel had insisted on that, and in the end Kyle had caved. But even so, just knowing she was going to be spending all that up-close-and-personal time with Kyle made her body tingle.
She’d had to draw on deep wells of willpower to keep from jumping at his proposition to try dating for real. The man fired her senses. He was funny and kind and sexy as hell. If it wasn’t for her—her past, her failings—she’d grab him tight and hold on for dear life. Lord knew she wanted to.
But she also knew that he’d never see her just as her, just Melissa. His perception would always be colored, and she simply couldn’t live with that, no matter how hard she might be falling for the man.
She stifled a sigh, forcing herself to concentrate on the Bryant house. Time enough to think about Kyle after she did her job.
Mr. Bryant had readily agreed to help out Kyle, and the deal was that he had no idea when the break-in would happen. The next day, the next month. No clue. He’d given Kyle the code for his alarm system so that Kyle could arm and disarm as necessary. And Kyle had agreed that he or Melissa would inform Bryant when a break-in was underway—afterMelissa got inside—to reassure him that a real burglar wasn’t at work.
They’d decided to do two runs. The first with the alarm system turned off, like a control group in a science experiment. That way, she could get a feel for how hard or easy the place was to get in when it was unprotected. Plus, she and Kyle could better gauge the strength of the protection once it was in place.
For each run, her mission was to get into the wall safe in the study and remove an item. Once she made a successful run with the alarm off, she’d turn around and do it again with the alarm on.
All in all it was nowhere near as useful as breaking into the Driskell mansion would be, but it was a close second. Plus, since Driskell had been adamant that no one break in while he was on vacation, they simply had no other option.
