Break This! (A 300 Moons Book) (6 page)

C
hance followed
the clerk to the elevator, which she called a “lift” in a decidedly snooty way. He didn’t miss Thea rolling her eyes, and had to bite back a grin.

He had been trying hard to dislike his new partner in crime. But he kept coming up short. She just didn’t seem like the type of person he expected to be a professional thief. But then, she was the only one he’d ever met. He might need to reevaluate his criteria.

Two bellhops had already gone ahead with their things, though Thea had seemed nervous about that. But when the elevator opened to their floor, the guys were standing in the hall with the suitcases.

Thea slipped a few bills out of her pocket and tipped them both.

“If you need anything, just let me know,” the clerk told Chance, batting her eyelashes.

Good grief. Chance was used to flirting, but this was a whole new level. He was standing here with his pretend wife, for Pete’s sake. He wondered if it has something to do with his 300th moon. Was he giving off extra sexy vibes? Pheromones, maybe?

If he was, Thea sure couldn’t smell them.

“Thanks,” he replied to the woman. “Is there something in your eye?”

The clerk blushed a red to match her hair, muttered something incoherent, then headed back to the elevator.

“Meanie,” Thea teased, giving him a playful shove.

“I’m married, remember? And I hate cheaters,” he said firmly, before remembering that he had tried to cheat at fighting.

Thea dropped her hand from his shoulder instantly with a strange look on her face and began to fuss with the key card. It took her four tries, but the little green light on the lock finally lit up.

The door opened and Thea gasped.

Chance looked in over her shoulder.

The room was essentially a glass box atop the hotel. Around them, he could see the city on three sides, clouds reflected in their glassy surfaces. No wonder they called it the Cloud Room. The interior was an enormous expanse of white carpet with nothing but a bed to break the clean white line.

One. Bed.

And what a bed -the mahogany sleigh bed looked somehow bigger than a king size and was made up with beige sheets and light blue satin pillows and comforter. It reminded Chance of something.

Oh.

Suddenly he was back in his room at the Stackhouse, looking at a glossy image of Thea, reclining on the beach - beige sand beneath her and bright blue water streaming over her. Her eyes were dancing and her lips parted slightly, as she covered her bare breasts with one tanned arm.

Thea walked in and approached the bed as Chance desperately tried to pry his eyes away from her.

“One bed,” she murmured. “Didn’t really think about that.”

“I’ll take the couch,” he said heroically before noticing that the couch was a modern kidney bean shaped thing on thin metal legs with dubious leather padding. It looked suspiciously like something Chance would have called a bench.

Thea threw her head back and laughed. The sound was like a waterfall.

Chance’s bear poked his nose out to investigate.

Down, boy. That’s not our mate.

“You could barely
sit
on that,” she giggled. “We’ll each take a side of this thing. It’s big enough it should have two zip codes,” she said, indicating the bed.

He smiled in relief, as he tried to rein in the bear, who was stirring in his chest, taking her offer to den together at face value.

Hopefully, she would decide to go out and then he could manage to get to sleep before she returned. If Jade’s lifestyle were any indication of what her friends liked to do, Thea would be out exploring the Glacier City night life in no time.

“I want to keep a low profile, so I’m going to stay in,” she said, though reading his thoughts. “Feel free to go out if you want though.”

“That sounds like a good idea,” he heard himself say. “Maybe we can get some room service though, I’m starving.”

“You and me both,” she agreed.

Once they were settled they got out the menu and made their call. When the food arrived, they sat on the bed to eat and go over the plan.

“Tonight and tomorrow we lay low,” Thea explained for the third time. “Tomorrow night, we go to the party at Worthington Enterprises.”

“It’s a fancy party, right?” Chance asked.

“Yes,” Thea said, raising an eyebrow.

“Will there be dancing?” he asked, hoping the answer was no. Chance was many things, but a dancer was not one of them.

“Probably,” she affirmed.

He nodded, afraid to admit his shortcoming, especially when Jade said Thea was a fantastic dancer.

“So when I get the signal, we’ll go down to the medical technology lab on the lower level,” Thea continued.

“Isn’t there security or something?” Chance asked.

“I’ve got it covered,” Thea replied quickly. “I’ve got it all mapped out, you’ll just follow me. Once we get in there we should be in and out in ninety seconds. All you have to do is watch my ass.”

Chance nodded again. Sounded good to him, because he was planning on watching her ass anyway.

“It seems too easy,” he countered.

“The plan is simple,” she said in a softer voice. “Those are the best kind. Less to go wrong.”

He looked up and she was giving him a sympathetic half-smile. The touch of sadness in her eyes made him wonder what had gotten her mixed up in this.

The doorbell rang, and Thea jumped out of the bed like it was on fire.

The server stared, open-mouthed at Thea’s beauty.

The bear puffed out with pride in his chest. Beautiful mate.

No, she’s not our mate,
Chance chided him again.

But the bear paid no mind and lifted his snout to delight in the scent of woman and food combined.

“Smells good, right?” Thea asked, turning to him after she sent the boy away, tip clutched in his hand.

“Yeah,” Chance agreed, trying not to notice the way her hair slid over her breasts as if encouraging him to look.

They set everything up on the glass table by the far wall, overlooking the water.

“Amazing, isn’t it?” Thea said, looking dreamily out at the water.

“Amazing,” Chance agreed, although he wasn’t really looking at the view outside.

“You know the city was sinking,” Thea shook her head in wonder.

“I never really understood how they stopped that,” Chance said, stabbing a strawberry with his fork. Thea ate healthy, really healthy - like he did. He’d wondered if plus size models ate nothing but cheeseburgers or something. It probably wasn’t a very politically correct thought. Anyway, Thea had placed her order first and he felt like copycat when she was through: grilled chicken, fresh fruit salad, whole milk.

“It was Worthington. The man, not the company. He basically gave his entire fortune to the city in order to build the floodgates. I’ve never heard of anything like it. Before that, everyone thought he was a useless playboy,” she said.

Chance thought about that, and bit back his hesitation about stealing from a man who would give everything away to save the place he loved. The old stucco house at Harkness Farms where he grew up was suddenly in his thoughts. Wouldn’t Chance give all he had to save it if it were in trouble?

“Why is he still throwing fancy parties if he gave away all his money?” Chance asked.

“It’s a public company, he didn’t bankrupt the whole thing,” she replied. “Which is probably good. He may need to rebuild his nest egg in case the city needs saving again.”

Chance looked up and she smiled.

The bear rumbled in his chest, and Chance found himself smiling back, noticing everything about her, the curve of her lips, the length of her eyelashes, the subtle flecks of gold in her brown eyes.

She looked down at her plate, a slight flush on her cheeks.

“You want to watch a movie?” Chance asked her.

“Sure, if we start it now, we won’t be up too late,” she answered.

“We’ve got this married couple thing down,” he teased.

“I’m sorry. You really don’t have to stay in because of me. I just need to be sure I’m at a hundred percent for tomorrow night,” she explained, hopping up to gather the plates and put them on the cart.

“It’s okay. I was only joking,” Chance assured her, helping her clean up. “This is actually kind of nice. Jade always wants to go to the clubs. I haven’t had a quiet night like this in a while.”

“Your girl does like to party,” Thea smiled and shook her head wryly.

“Tell me about it,” Chance said. “You don’t?”

“I don’t mind once in a while, especially if there’s dancing involved. But it gets old.”

“It was never really my scene,” he admitted.

“Then how did you and Jade ever end up together?” she asked.

“We were training at the same gym. Fighters have a strange lifestyle. It was so nice to meet someone who understands what it’s like. We just hit it off right away,” he said, wondering suddenly why he and Jade didn’t have a more romantic story.

“That’s really nice,” Thea said.

“How about you?” he asked, his voice a bit higher than normal. “Anyone special?”

“I travel a lot for my job,” she said. “It makes it tough. Doesn’t seem worth the effort.”

“When you meet the right person, it will totally be worth it,” he told her.

“You think so?” she asked.

“I know it. You’ll find someone who will make you forget about every other person in the world,” he told her earnestly, trying to ignore the fact that until Thea had brought her up, he hadn’t thought of Jade once all night.

“Hm,” she said noncommittally, rolling the cart into the hallway as he held the door for her.

“And that person will feel the same way about you,” he told her. “And everything will be worth it.”

“That’s the real problem though, isn’t it?” she asked, standing in the threshold. “How can you know the other person really feels the same way you do?”

“You
just know
,” he told her, now having successfully repeated everything he’d heard his foster mom say about love.

“Do you, though?” she asked, looking right into his eyes.

“Absolutely,” he answered.

Thea studied him for a moment.

She got a strange look on her face, and opened her mouth as if to say something else, then closed it again.

Then she smiled at him again, but it was a closed mouth smile that didn’t go to her eyes.

“What movie do you want to watch?” she asked, slipping past him and flopping herself onto the bed.

“If we watch
Ocean’s 11,
does that count as training?” Chance joked, trying not to picture her topless and failing miserably. “Like, can we write it off on our taxes?”

Thea groaned and hit him with a sofa pillow.

Chance flopped down next to her, grabbed a pillow, and made as if to bonk her on the head with it.

She giggled madly and ducked.

He was hyper aware of just how close she was. She smelled like a meadow after a thunderstorm. He could almost hear the pulse thrumming in her neck.

Concentrate, Chance. Follow the plan
, he told himself.

But his body was responding to her nearness, unconcerned with whatever plans he was supposed to have.

T
hea scrolled
through the pay-per-view selections on the enormous television.

She desperately needed something, anything to distract her from the heady warmth radiating off the big man beside her.

“Horror?” she asked, looking at the image of the most recent creepy film with a bedraggled woman on the cover and thinking it might cool off her suddenly over-active libido.

“I don’t really like all the violence,” Chance said off-handedly.

“I think you might be in the wrong line of work,” she quipped.

Chance laughed, the deep sound of it reverberated in her own chest, making her feel almost light-headed.

“I know it may seem odd, but I don’t really see fighting as violence,” he explained. “It’s a test of skill. You go out there and try to work your game plan, and the other guy tries to work his, and the better man comes out on top.”

“But you hurt each other,” she said, pointing out the obvious.

“Sure,” he admitted. “But that’s not the endgame. The things I do to win might cause my opponent some pain along the way, but that’s not my goal. My goal is to play the game better than the other guy. I don’t get in the cage with the intention of hurting anyone.”

Thea thought about the end of his last fight. The look on his face when he thought he’d injured his opponent. Oddly, she believed him.

“But a lot of these movies seem to glorify violence for the sake of violence,” Chance continued. “There’s no purpose to it. And I don’t really like that.”

“Fair enough,” Thea agreed.

“Ooh,” they both said at once when the cover to the newest superhero movie appeared on the screen.

“You like superhero movies?” Chance grinned.

“I always wanted to be a superhero,” she told him.

“I think you’re
really
in the wrong line of work,” he teased.

“Touché,” she said, raising one eyebrow.

He smiled that warm smile again and her heart ached.

Stop it, Thea. He doesn’t like you. He likes Jade.
Not for the first time, she begrudged her friend the awesome guy she was cheating on.

They watched the movie in silence for a while.

Thea enjoyed the quiet. Chance didn’t feel the need to fill the space with mindless chatter. That took a confidence most guys didn’t possess.

She could get used to a life like this.

No.

She stopped the train of thought before it could get out of the station. That was too dangerous.

The movie was fun, if predictable. They took turns making sarcastic comments as the good guys beat up the bad guys.

“Chance?” Thea heard herself asking suddenly. “Are we the bad guys?”

He turned to her.

“I hope not,” he told her earnestly.

“Me too.”

They went back to watching quietly. The room grew cooler as the sky around them turned dark. When she shivered, Chance pulled the comforter up to cover them both, then shifted slightly. His thigh now pressed against hers, and he placed one arm behind her, leaning on it and pressing his whole side against hers, warming her deliciously with the impossible heat that radiated from his body. If he weren’t obviously the picture of perfect health, she would’ve sworn he was running a high fever.

Thea became aware of every breath he took, every slight movement. The tension reminded her of endless teenage nights when she used to sit next to her clueless high school boyfriend on the sofa and wonder if he would put his arm around her. He never did.

At last, the movie ended. Thea mourned the idea that Chance would get up and leave her cold.

Instead, he turned to her.

She looked up at him as his serious brown eyes met hers, then drifted down to her lips.

Thea held her breath, waiting.

Was he going to kiss her? What would she do if he did?

Then his jaw clenched and he wrenched himself off the bed.

“I’m gonna call Jade to say goodnight,” he said in a strained voice, grabbing his phone from the bedside table.

Thea grabbed her own phone and flicked through messages without reading them, desperate to slow her drumming heart.

“Hello?” Chance said from across the room. He sounded confused. “I’m looking for Jade. This is her phone, right?”

There was a terrible pause.

“She’s where?” he asked sounding incredulous.

Another pause.

“Who is this?”

Pause.

“This is her boyfriend…Hello?”

He looked down at the phone and then slipped it into his pocket.

That didn’t sound good. Thea wished desperately that she’d had the good sense to make herself scarce before the call.

“Everything okay?” she asked, realizing she couldn’t exactly ignore him.

“Yeah,” Chance said, flustered. “Some guy answered her phone. He said she was in the shower.”

“Oh,” Thea replied.

“She’s probably at the gym,” he said, though Thea could tell he didn’t really believe it. “She must have left her phone out in the main area. Somebody probably picked it up.”

“I’m sure,” Thea agreed quickly.

“Yeah. It’s good that she’s training,” he said, beginning to pace. “She used to be a real gym rat. She’s been pushing it off too much lately.”

“In the time I’ve known her, she hasn’t gone much. I’m always surprised she can maintain all those muscles. If I didn’t know better, I’d swear she was using some kind of voodoo,” Thea joked weakly.

She jumped as Chance put the phone down too hard on the bedside table.

“She’s
not
,” he said darkly.

Oh. She’d hit on a nerve.

And then it clicked.

Miss Sharp didn’t have something on Chance. She had something on Jade.

That explained everything. Chance was risking it all for Jade, and she was treating him like trash.

Thea felt her friendship with Jade tear irreparably.

“Of course not,” she said in a tone she hoped sounded more convincing than it felt. “And I’m sure she’s fine right now. So some guy answered her phone? So what? You’re right, probably just someone from the gym.”

She wouldn’t say more. She would
not
.

But Thea felt her anger at Jade coming to a boil.

No, she needed to walk away. This wasn’t her concern.

Thea Harlow was good at a lot of things. Walking away had never been one of them. The words were out of her mouth before she could stop them.

“It’s not like he had some sexy Italian accent or something,” she finished lightly.

Chance froze, his big body silhouetted in the lamplight.

“Who is he?” he asked at last, his voice flat.

Shit. What the hell was she doing?

“I-I’m sorry. I didn’t mean…” she tried off, wishing she could take it back.

“Who is he?” Chance roared, turning to her, his eyes blazing. Not just with the intensity of his anger. She swore for a moment his eyes were actually glowing. Must have been a trick of the light.

“Just some dumb photographer from the promo the other night,” she admitted. “I shouldn’t have said anything. It’s none of my business.”

“No,” he spat. “It’s not.”

“Chance, I’m sorry.” She rose, reaching instinctively for his shoulder to comfort him.

He pulled away.

Well, good job, Thea. You screwed this one up royally. The poor guy didn’t need to know, it doesn’t help him.

And it certainly wasn’t going to make the job any easier.

The room suddenly felt much colder than before.

Thea decided to give him some space.

He didn’t say a word as she slipped her feet back into her shoes and headed out the door.