Sandra's Classics - The Bad Boys of Romance - Boxed Set (46 page)

A smile twisted across his face. "You don't understand, Sara. I never stole
any
jewels. None, not ever, not at the Winstead party or anywhere else."

What was he talking about? Peter was a thief. A reformed thief, yes, but...

His head bent towards hers. "Johnny was the cat burglar." His eyes darkened with pain. "We'd played the game too long, you see; we kept playing it after that first night, and after a while it became too important to him. He couldn't stop."

Sara was almost afraid to breathe. "But if your brother was the thief—if it wasn't you—"

Peter's breath hissed between his teeth and she knew, from the look on his face, that he hadn't heard her.

"It was fun, at first." He shook his head. "Hell, fun isn't the right word. It was exciting, it was—it was the biggest kick in the world. We got good at it—after a while, there wasn't an office on campus we hadn't been in. We moved our raids into the city—"

"The foreign embassies?"

His teeth flashed in a feral smile. "No security system could stop us. We were invincible." His hands fell away from her; Sara watched, spellbound, as he stared beyond her into the darkness. "And each time, Johnny took something. Never much, not then. A notepad. A book of matches—"

Sara stared at him. "But it changed," she said, knowing instinctively what came next. "Stationery and matches weren't enough."

Peter nodded. "Yes. And that's when I realized the game had gotten out of hand, that we had to stop. I told Johnny. He laughed  but I said—I said that was how it had to be. It was over, I told him. I wanted out." He drew a shuddering breath. "But it wasn't over, not for him. I should have known. I should have suspected—"

Sara put her hand on his arm. "Peter—"

"I went to his apartment the night he was killed. I had a key; I just wanted to be in a place that was filled with his spirit." He shrugged free of her hand. "It was all there. The jewels he'd stolen. The newspaper clippings about the thefts and the daring cat burglar who had pulled them off." Pain knifed across his face. "I almost went crazy, trying to think of a way to protect him from what would happen when the papers got hold of the story. At first I thought I would toss it all in a sewer."

"But you didn't," Sara whispered. "You decided to return the jewels."

Peter laughed. "Crazy, right?" The smile fled his face. "Maybe I
was
crazy that night. All I know is, it went wrong right away. There was an emerald locket on a gold chain—I recognized it, it belonged to a woman Johnny and I had both dated. In fact, I'd seen her wearing it two nights before. She was away for the weekend, I knew that, too. And I thought, hell, she doesn't even know the locket's gone. If I can just return it before she gets back—"

"But you got caught."

''Some terrific break-in artist I was, right?” He gave a hollow laugh. ''Yes. She'd come home early. I'd played the game a hundred times before, but the one time it really mattered, I got caught."

Sara stared at him. "And you let the police think it was you all along."

He nodded. "It was the last thing I could do for my brother," he said softly. "It was all that was left."

The room filled with silence. Tears filled Sara's eyes.

"You must have loved him a lot," she murmured.

Peter swung towards her with a speed that made her flinch. "Yes," he growled, catching her by the shoulders, "I loved him. He was all I had. And I never once looked back. I never regretted a minute of it, not the trial, or the contempt in my grandfather's face, or even the endless hell of prison..." His hands bit into her flesh. "Until that night in that fleabag motel, Sara. That was the first time I found myself thinking maybe what I'd done had been a mistake, that if I'd never let the world think I was a thief, I wouldn't have ended up in a mess with no way out."

"There
was
a way out," said Sara. "And you took it. I don't blame you for running off, Peter. You couldn't face prison."

His mouth narrowed. "I wasn't the one who ran off.
You
were. You heard me on the phone that morning, and you leaped to the conclusion that I was leaving you because I didn't need you anymore. I know that's what happened; you might as well admit it."

Sara drew in her breath. "Yes, I heard you. But I never thought that, not for a minute. I heard what you said about it being safer to travel alone. And I understood, Peter." Her eyes met his. "I knew how determined you were not to get caught. I knew you regretted the scheme I'd talked you into. I—"

"You're damned right I was determined not to get caught! You would have been an accessory. If they found us breaking into Winstead's house, you would have gone to jail. And I would have died before I let that happen to you."

What was he saying? Sara stared at him in disbelief. "You mean, you were afraid for me, not yourself?"

"I couldn't let you run a risk like that." Peter's eyes darkened. "I've been in a cage, remember? I know what it's like."

She ran her tongue over her lips. "Then why—why didn't you say something? Why didn't you ask the man on the phone to make up new papers for the two of us?"

Peter's hands slipped from her shoulders, up her throat to her face. His fingers threaded into her hair.

"That's what I was going to do. I thought about it while we were driving towards Brookville. But then we got to the motel; I looked at you in that dingy little room, I saw the terror on your beautiful face when you thought the cops were after us, and I knew I loved you too much to drag you into that kind of life with me."

She looked into his eyes. It was all too incredible to be true. He loved her. He had been leaving her only
because
he loved her.

"Why didn't you tell me?" she whispered.

"What right did I have to tell you I loved you?" he demanded. "What could I have offered you?"

"Your love is enough," Sara said. "It's all I want—"

Suddenly, his face twisted in pain. "How could you have turned me in, Sara? Didn't what we'd shared mean anything to you?"

"It meant everything. I love you so much, Peter. I—"

"You heard me on the phone, you heard me making plans to leave and, right away, you thought the worst." He shook his head. "Hell, you thought the worst all along. Each time I tried to tell you how I felt about you, you accused me of trying to use you."

"I think I was just afraid to believe you cared for me. It was all like a dream."

He tilted her face to his. "Why didn't you tell me you'd heard me make that call? Why didn't you ask me to explain?"

Sara shook her head. "I didn't want to complicate things for you, Peter. I thought—I thought that's how you wanted it. Don't you understand? I love you."

His eyes grew dark. "Don't keep saying that," he said in a fierce whisper. "You're just trying to save yourself now. You don't love me. If you did, you would never have betrayed me."

Sara put her fingers to his lips. "I didn't betray you. I didn't call the police. It was the desk clerk—he recognized you." She looked into his eyes. "I would never do anything to hurt you."

He drew in his breath, then let it out in a ragged sigh. "Dear God, I want so damned much to believe you…"

"You
have
to believe me," she said urgently. "We have to get out of here, Peter. They'll be coming after you, and Jim Garrett will know to look here."

"Garrett? What do you mean?"

Quickly, she began undoing the tiny buttons that ran down the bodice of her flannel gown.

"I told him everything. That I love you. That
Winstead's the real thief. That we came back to Brookville to break into his safe." She tilted her head to the side. "You didn't tell that to anyone."

"No." Peter gave her a quick smile. "I kept telling myself I hated you—but I didn't want to implicate you. And I knew no one would believe me if I said
Winstead was guilty."

She nodded. "You were right. Jim Garrett thought I was crazy when I tried to tell him about
Winstead—although for a while I thought I'd finally found some proof he would accept." She opened the last button and looked at Peter. "Winstead made a slip of the tongue the other day. He told me—well, it doesn't matter now. But I got the chief to agree to try and get the truth out of him."

"And?"

"And it didn't work. Or maybe the chief didn't bother." Her voice grew muffled as she pulled the nightgown over her head. "It doesn't matter," she said, tossing the gown aside. "What we have to do now is hurry. The police—" She paused. "Peter? Maybe later it would help if you told Jim the truth about your brother… But you won't, will you?"

A muscle tightened in Peter's jaw. "No. Johnny's dead, and I've paid his debt. That part of my life—and his—is over. In fact, I've finally decided what to do with the rest of the things
he—he
took. I have it all in a vault, along with the newspaper clippings. I'm going to mail everything back to its rightful owners."

Sara's breath caught. "Anonymously," she said quickly.

Peter laughed. "Very anonymously."

She let out her breath. "Good. We can work out the details later. There isn't time now. We—" She frowned as Peter chuckled softly. "What?"

He was looking at her so strangely. Where was the coldness she had seen in his eyes? Even the furrowed lines the past days had etched beside his mouth had eased away. He smiled lazily.

"No modesty at all, Miss Mitchell," he said softly. "There you were, all nice and proper in that prim and proper floor-to-neck granny-gown—"

Sara looked down at herself, and then at him. A blush spread over her cheeks, and she snatched up the discarded gown and held it in front of her.

"For goodness' sake," she said, "am I the only one of us who's thinking straight? Chief Garrett—"

"Chief Garrett is probably tucked into his bed, where all intelligent people should be on a night like this." Peter reached out and caught hold of the nightgown. He tugged at it lightly. "You could catch a chill like that, Sara. Whatever were you thinking?"

She tugged the gown toward her; he tugged it toward him.

''This is no time to play games, Peter. Chief Garrett won't be in his bed once he gets word you've broken out of… Why are you smiling?"

Peter grinned. "I left that jail the same way I entered it, sweet Sara. Through the front door—only this time, there were no handcuffs on my wrists."

"You mean the judge finally agreed to grant you bail?"

He shook his head. "Something much better."

Sara touched her tongue to her lips. "Peter, don't tease me. What are you talking about?"

His fingers curled into the flannel gown. "I'm free, Sara."

The simple words were the most beautiful she had ever heard. "Free?" she repeated in an incredulous whisper.

Peter smiled. "They dropped all charges. I didn't get the whole story; I was too busy thinking about what I was going to do to you when I found you. But it had something to do with Garrett getting a full confession from Simon
Winstead, after the jeweler let slip something incriminating." His smile softened as he pulled  the gown from her nerveless fingers and dropped it to the floor. "Your handiwork, apparently, Miss Mitchell."

Sara drew in her breath. "Oh, Peter—"

"Winstead, it turns out, ran up some heavy-duty gambling debts. He needed money—lots of money. So he decided to steal his own jewels, and use me as a fall-guy." Peter's arms closed slowly around her. "And it would have worked, except for you."

"It's over, then."

He nodded. "It's over."

She closed her eyes. "I can hardly believe it. I—" Her eyes flew open. "Peter? What are you doing?"

His hands spread along her naked back. "You're cold," he said with artful innocence. "I'm just trying to see what we can do to warm you up."

A slow sweetness spread through her limbs. "Wait a minute. You have some explaining to do yourself, Peter Saxon. How could you have thought I'd called the police?"

He smiled. "I'll find some way to apologize," he said. He drew her closer and kissed her throat. "There must be a way to make it up to you."

Her eyes closed as his lips moved to her earlobe. "And—and what you said before, about what you were going to do to me when you found me—"

His mouth closed over hers. "Yes," he whispered, when he finally raised his head, "I spent a lot of time on that. The trouble was, my ideas all kept running in this general direction."

Sara's heart was racing against his. "That's all right," she said breathlessly. "It's a pretty nice direction."

He laughed as he tumbled her back on the bed.

"You really are shameless," he said softly. "Just the kind of woman a man like me needs."

Sara's eyes sought his. "Am I?" Her teasing smile fled. "I want to be, Peter. I want to be all you'll need to make you happy for the rest of your life."

Laughter danced in his eyes. "Is that a proposal?"

Reach out and take the chance, Sara.