Too Wicked to Keep. Julie Leto

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СКАЧАТЬ the first time, he caught a glimpse of the haughty, privileged princess he’d met five years ago. But only a glimpse.

      “What are you talking about?”

      “I came here to find you.”

      “And your husband let you? What is he, a moron?”

      “Don’t speak that way about Marshall,” she shot back. “He was a good man who didn’t deserve what I did to him.”

      Was?

      Danny stood. “No, he didn’t deserve any pain we caused him.”

      She pressed her mouth into a tight line—a line Danny couldn’t help but want to breach. On a normal day, at a normal hour, Abigail was a classic Mediterranean beauty, with her thick, dark hair, smooth olive skin and expressive amber eyes. But when she was angry—when she let her control slip even a little—she knocked the breath from his lungs.

      “Very true,” she conceded. “But I didn’t expect to hear compassion from Daniel Burnett, or is it David Brandon again?”

      “I haven’t been David Brandon for—” He cut his claim short. He’d actually used the name the day before. He’d developed a habit of trying it every so often, to see if the pain of losing Abby had lessened any in the years since she’d kicked him out of her life.

      It hadn’t.

      “Why’d you come looking for me?”

      His voice was as strangled as the skin beneath his ring finger. Her mouth curved into a tiny smile—the first one that flashed all the way up to her irises. His pain gave her pleasure. He couldn’t blame her.

      She sidled closer, then danced the tips of her fingers up his shirt, from his waistband to his collar. “I have a job for you.”

      With a flick of her nail up the underside of his chin, a fire sparked through Danny’s body that made him want to drown himself in the moisture of her mouth. She was taunting him. Making him pay, one hormone at a time, for nearly destroying her future.

      He not only didn’t blame her—he wanted more.

      His brain might have registered all the reasons why he should stay half a country away from Abigail Albertini Chamberlain, but his dick hadn’t gotten the memo. Blood rushed down so fast, Danny had to grab the edge of the bar to keep from losing his balance.

      “No way.”

      “You owe me,” she said.

      “So? You’re playing with fire, Abby. I can’t promise you won’t get burned again. And this time, Marshall won’t forgive you. I wouldn’t.”

      “You wouldn’t have the first time.”

      She took her time tracing her fingers up his neck and then tousling the strands of hair at his temples. When her gaze locked with his, he saw none of the naive, uncertain girl she used to be.

      She was all woman now—and she had something up her sleeve, figuratively speaking. Something that wasn’t going to be good—at least, not for him.

      “No,” he conceded. “I wouldn’t have forgiven you.”

      “Good,” she said, pushing away from him and snatching the flute of champagne the bartender had delivered. “Then you haven’t changed. I’m counting on you being the same lowlife, conscienceless thief you used to be.”

      He forced a chuckle. “Why would you hope for that?”

      She sipped her champagne. After enjoying half the glass, replete with appreciative hums and slides of her tongue over her rich, luscious lips, she put the flute back onto the bar and stretched up onto her tiptoes to whisper in his ear.

      When she did, her breasts brushed against his chest. The sensation caused a domino effect of ignitions that sparked his every nerve ending.

      “Because I’ve found my painting and I need you to make good on your promise and steal it back.”

      3

      ABBY SPUN ON HER four-inch heels, grabbed the bottle of champagne out of the ice bucket and started her hip-swinging parade out of the hotel bar. She measured her steps and the rhythm of her walk. She needed him to follow. She needed him to prove he wasn’t so much of a scoundrel that he’d break the last promise he made to her before he’d disappeared.

      She supposed she could have offered him money. She had plenty of it, not that it had helped her thus far in averting a scandal for her family. She’d thought about offering her forgiveness, but she wasn’t sure he cared about it or that she had any to give. Time, distance and four years of marriage to a man who loved her had lessened the sting. She was still pissed off at Danny for nearly wrecking her life, but she no longer wanted to curl into a whimpering ball of loss and regret.

      But he probably didn’t need her money, and if he cared one bit about forgiveness, he would have made good on his vow to retrieve the painting years ago. If she wanted him to follow now, she was going to offer him something she hoped he still craved—a chance to win her back.

      It wasn’t going to happen, of course. She might have put on her sexiest dress and flown across the country to lure him back to Chicago, but she wasn’t going to sleep with him. She’d been there, done that and had the heartache to prove it.

      Though she had to admit—he was still hot.

      She knew better than anyone that any living, breathing woman within close proximity to David Brandon, aka Daniel Burnett, would be subject to a raging surge of lust. But while she’d come here anticipating a tug of attraction from the leftover riptides of their fast and furious affair, she hadn’t expected to nearly drown.

      The minute she’d seen him from across the crowded casino, she’d fallen backward in time. Her nerve endings had sizzled and her brain, conditioned over the past five years to block out the memory of the night he’d approached her for the first time in a darkened museum gallery, had betrayed her with pImages** vibrant with sex and sensuality. From that first whispered innuendo, he’d turned her inside out, exposing the desires she’d kept so carefully hidden from everyone in her life, her fiancé included.

      But she was older now. Stronger. She’d tried other avenues to reclaim her painting before it exposed her family—mostly her father—to derision and ridicule.

      Lust aside, she couldn’t allow her fears to stop her plan. It wasn’t a wise plan. It certainly wasn’t remotely ethical. But that ship had sailed a long time ago. Trying to reclaim her good-girl status now was like trying to win back her virginity. The only thing she had left from her days before Daniel had charmed his way into her life was her reputation. If she didn’t act soon, that would be at risk, too.

      “Abby, wait.”

      His voice traveled over the retreating sounds of the casino, but she didn’t break her stride. The doors from the lobby to the street slid open, blasting her head to toe with cool night air that had, only hours before, clung to her with the warm, wet heat that made Louisiana so infamous. Tracking Daniel down to New Orleans had been no small feat. She might never have found him if he hadn’t made the unexpected mistake of getting himself arrested in California. “Abby!”

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