Flirting With Danger (30 page)

Tuesday, 11:15 a.m.
London Time

Two weeks later, Sam sat beside Rick as they drove past meadows and farms and groves of oak trees. She’d never seen this part of England. It seemed so peaceful and lovely, and a great deal like Rick Addison.

“Patricia agreed to testify against Wallis?” she asked, turning to look as they crossed a four-hundred-year-old bridge.

“She said she would.”

“I think she wants you back.”

“I’m not available.”

Sam swallowed. “Will she be any help?”

He shrugged. “According to the authorities, the only thing she knows for sure is that Peter was in Florida last week for two days.”

“Long enough to kill Etienne and get the tablet.”

“He rented a BMW.”

“The one we saw on the highway.” That had been close.

Rick nodded. “Most of it’s still circumstantial, but it’s coming together. And they’re working to make sure
you
don’t have to testify. If the defense attorney gets you on the stand—”

She shuddered. “Then I go to hell for lying under oath.”

He glanced at her, concern touching his eyes. He’d worn that expression a lot over the past two weeks, even after she’d managed to con her way out of the hospital and back to his London penthouse. “It won’t come to that. I’m certain I have a house in a country where they don’t have an extradition agreement with the States.”

She made an effort to smile. “That’s good to know.”

They drove for another few minutes in silence. “Just up there, on the left,” Rick said abruptly, gesturing in her direction.

They crested a small hill, then she saw it. “Holy crap.”

A rise of green, rolling hills on two sides bordered a large lake fronted by oak and willow trees. In the middle of them, up a gentle slope of grass, stood a castle. It was the only way to describe it. A hundred windows looked out from its squared U, with spires on either corner and a rounded entryway in the front, with massive pillars that waited at the head of a wide set of granite steps.

“Nice, isn’t it?” he asked, grinning.

“It’s Buckingham bloody Palace,” she returned.

“Hardly. It’s called Rawley Park.”

“You said you grew up here.”

Nodding again, Rick turned off the main road, heading along a narrow, winding drive that gave glimpses of the house through sun-spattered leaves and twisting vines of ivy. “I inherited it, actually. This is where I like to spend at least a couple of months every year, if I can. It’s home.”

Home
. She’d never really had one of those. Quiet, safe, home. It terrified her, but she wanted to try it. With him.

She craned her neck to keep it in view. “Seriously, Rick, it’s magnificent. If it was mine, I’d never want to leave.”

Sam frowned as soon as she finished speaking. After what he’d said to her, every time she made a statement like that, she
felt self-conscious, like she was asking for something. She wasn’t; not really. Spending more time with him was enough. She couldn’t remember when she’d ever felt as safe, as relaxed, as she had over the past two weeks. Four, if she counted the rather interesting beginning of this odd relationship.

He only pointed out a small herd of deer in one of the clearings. “I’m glad you like it.” Rick cleared his throat. “I’ve been meaning to run something by you, and now seems as good a time as any.”

She stiffened. “I wanted to tell you something, too.”

Rick glanced at her. “All right, you first.”

“I’ve been talking with Stoney, and we’re thinking of retiring.”

“Really.”

“Yes.” She cleared her throat. If he laughed, she was either going to punch him or die of mortification. “We’re going to start a business. A security installation and consulting firm.”

For a long moment he drove in silence. Finally, though, a slow smile curved his mouth. “That’s lucky for me, then. I was going to tell you that I’d like you to review the security at all my private properties. I’ve been told that it’s crappy.”

“Good. Then you can hire me.”

He lifted an eyebrow. “I have to pay you?”

“I’ll make you a good deal.”

“I should hope so.” He drew a breath. “There’s something else you need to know.”

“Rick, I—”

“Shut up. It’s my turn now.”

She folded her arms across her chest, pretending that intimate conversation with him didn’t still leave her nervous. “Fine.”

“Thank you. As I was saying, with a great deal of my collection now gone into other people’s hands, and some of what remains devalued because no one can verify whether it’s authentic or not, I’d like to start over.” He glanced at her again. “And I’d like you to help me with that. If you think you’ll have time.”

“So you’re trying to make sure I go legit.”

“Sam—”

“I told you, I…don’t really like things in private collections.”

Rick grinned. “I know that. And I’m going to open part of Rawley Park to the public, as an art and antiques repository. That way I can showcase more works and have them accessible to everyone.”

For the second time in her life, she wanted to cry. Not in sadness, this time, but in joy. It was a new experience. “Wow.”

They pulled through the gates into the long, half-circular drive in front of the house. This close, it was even more massive than she’d realized. And even more beautiful.

“Samantha?”

“I’m thinking.”

“Don’t think. Just say yes, or say no. It’s pretty simple, that way.” He put the car into park and shut off the key. “And I’m giving you the Bentley, regardless.”

“I told you that I didn’t…like you for your stuff.”

“My girlfriend doesn’t drive stolen cars. That’s where I draw the line.”

Sam leaned over and kissed him, long and slow and deep. “Yes,” she murmured. “I think I’ll be able to work something out. In my spare time, of course.”

“Good.” He kissed her back. “Good.” Rick smiled at her, then reached over to undo her seat belt. “Let’s go. I want you to meet Sykes.”

“Your butler. This is where he stays, you said.”

“Yes, unless I need him elsewhere.”

“Cool.”

He climbed out of the car and strode around to pull her door open for her. Rick took her hand, and together they walked up the shallow black granite steps to the front door. As they reached the portico beneath the pillars, the double doors swung open, and the tallest, thinnest, oldest man in the world bowed to them.

“Welcome home, my lord,” he said.

Samantha stopped. “My what?” she asked, very slowly.

They both ignored her. “It’s good to be back,” Rick returned. “Sykes, this is Samantha Jellicoe. She’s going to be staying here with me.”

“Good morning, Miss Jellicoe.”

“Sykes.” Sam looked back at Rick. “If I might repeat, ‘my what?’”

For the first time in her recollection, Rick looked sheepish. “I suppose I forgot to tell you. I’m kind of a nobleman.”

“Kind of. What kind of?”

He drew a breath, then smiled that gorgeous smile of his, the one that made her knees weak. “I’m kind of the Marquis of Rawley.”

“Oh, good grief. Forget the good deal on the security consulting. Now you’re paying full price.”

“Hm. We can negotiate.”

First of all, I’d like to make clear that Samantha Jellicoe and Richard Addison are fictional characters, that Solano Dorado is a fictional mansion, and that the events described in
Flirting With Danger
aren’t based on any real incident—at least not intentionally, and not one that I know of.

That’s the beauty of being a fiction writer—I can make all this stuff up.

On the other hand, Palm Beach, Florida, is obviously a real place, and so are Chuck and Harold’s Café with its retractable roof, the Meissen Shop, Butterfly World, and the Norton Museum. In fact, at this time I’d like to offer a blanket apology to all of the real places my fictional characters have visited and will visit in the future, but the minutae of the story at times required me to bend the decor and the settings a little bit. And, of course, any damage done to these places by Sam and Rick, et al, is of the make-believe variety.

So, to get down to the nitty-gritty, I’ll attempt to explain how this book came about. Those readers who’ve seen my name before on book covers are probably more familiar with me as a writer of historical romances. In fact, as of the publication of
Flirting
I’ve written two Regency romances, two
novellas for anthologies, and eleven full-length historical romances. All of the previous were set in England between 1811 and 1820 during the Regency of Prince George, later to be crowned George IV.

Why does a confirmed historical romance author write a contemporary romance/mystery/comedy/adventure, then? The answer’s actually pretty simple. McDonald’s. The fast-food restaurant, that is.

For eleven years I had worked at the same place in Southern California—suffice it to say that it was an executive support position at a high-end automobile dealership—for a boss who was…difficult. On a Thursday in June, which has since become known as “freedom day,” after a Wednesday that marked my second appearance on the
USA Today
best seller list and my first appearance on the
New York Times
best seller list, my boss said something typically mean, and I decided I’d had enough. I quit.

The next morning I realized that 1) I was a single homeowner with monthly mortgage payments to make, 2) I had the previous week turned in the last book of a two-book contract, and 3) I had no job. While I was fairly certain I would be offered another book contract to produce a set number of historical romances, I wasn’t sure exactly how soon that would be. And so at that moment I had something I wasn’t very familiar with—free time.

Amid my parents’ gentle suggestions that I begin filling out applications and find another job with a steady income before I ended up at—yes—McDonald’s flipping burgers, and amid my fears that I wouldn’t find a position where I would both earn enough money to make my house payments and have enough energy left over actually to write a book, I reverted to my usual strategy in times of stress and popped in a DVD to watch a movie.

The movie was one of my favorites,
To Catch a Thief
, starring Cary Grant and Grace Kelly. Somewhere halfway through it, I began jotting notes to myself—what if the suave, high-rent cat burglar were a woman, and what if she tried to
steal something from a rich, arrogant businessman, and what if they somehow ended up having to work together?

With that extensive outline I flipped open my Toshiba laptop computer, popped open the first of about ten thousand cans of chilled diet Dr Pepper, and started writing. I’d never written that way before, with no plot, no preconceptions, in a genre I didn’t know, and with no real thought other than that I wanted to do something different and fun. And I have to say, it turned out to be a blast.

Rick Addison was a combination of Hugh Jackman, Cary Grant, and Donald Trump, while in my mind Sam Jellicoe bore a strong resemblance to Remington Steele, Ashley Judd, and me—not the cat burglar stuff, but the interest in history and art and the fondness for diet sodas and Godzilla and all things British (well, one thing British in her case, anyway).

I wanted to set the story somewhere different, too—at least for me. That precluded England, though I did end up there toward the end. And I live half an hour from Bel Aire and Rodeo Drive, settled among freeways and bad traffic and Hollywood, and I didn’t want that. All the way across the country sat Palm Beach, Florida, a couple of miles from the Everglades and one of the top two or three wealthiest counties in the U.S. Heat, humidity, wilderness, wealth, alligators, a private, insulated community of the rich and famous—it seemed perfect.

Rick’s Palm Beach home, Solano Dorado (Golden Sun) was loosely based on Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago, also located in Palm Beach. While Trump’s estate has been turned into a massive and exclusive country club, though, Rick’s home would be designed for the privacy and comfort of one man. The two showplaces do have more in common than merely size and grandeur, however.

At the least, they share a designer in the famous Palm Beach architect Addison Mizner—the man who was basically responsible for the Mediterranean Revival style in that area of Florida. Keeping the Spanish/Mediterranean style in
mind for the exterior, I wanted to stock the interior of Solano Dorado with the works of art and the antiques Rick had purchased over the years—everything from sixteenth-century tapestries to Picassos to first folios of Shakespearean plays. Sam’s specialty would of course be lifting items and artifacts of precisely that value and importance. And then I would put the two of them directly at odds with one another: The unstoppable force meets the immovable object.

Since I felt comfortable with English history, I decided to make Rick both British and a lord. I did have all those tax write-off Regency era research books, and thought I might as well make use of them. It took longer to become comfortable with Sam; but after uncovering a handful of books on art fraud, high-end robberies, and burglar alarm setups, I felt like I pretty much knew where she was coming from and where I was heading with her.

Whereas I wanted Rick to be the cool, logical, confident one, I wanted Sam to be more of a hothead, a chameleon, tough and street-smart but able to sit at a table with the wealthiest, most cultured people in the world and still blend in. Neither of them is big on trust, but they find they can rely on one another.

Going from carriages and letter-writing heroines to cell phones and Mercedes-Benzes made for an interesting trip, and it was especially fun to be able to write in a character who likes
Star Wars.
If only that meant I could write off my collection of action figures. Oh, well. Here’s hoping.

As it turns out, Rick and Sam will live on—their second book,
Playing With Fire
, is in the works. We’ll see all the old familiar places and people, plus a few new ones—including Patricia, the ex-wife. And I haven’t had to seek employment at McDonald’s, which is definitely good news both for me and for the fast-food-buying public.