The Black Sheep and the English Rose (25 page)

“Yes, but no cab. He wasn't interested in waiting around if I left, so I had Sean come around. He's right over there.” She pointed, and Finn could just make out the front end of the limo in the rear parking lot across the street.

Still holding hands, they hurried across the street, and Sean pulled around to pick them up.

“Where to?” he asked.

Finn looked to Felicity, who turned to Sean. “Back to our hotel.”

Sean just smiled patiently.

“Oh,” she said, “that's right, you don't know where that is.”

Finn gave him the name, but Sean waved a hand before he could give the address. “I know it,” he said.

They both slid into the backseat and were on their way moments later.

Felicity didn't even bother with smoothing her skirt or her hair. She shifted to the edge of her seat, leaning toward him, her focus exclusively on him. “I'm sorry.”

“I'm not sure you have anything to be sorry about,” he said, and realized it was true. “You were already involved in this for your own reasons when I came along. You had no real reason to change that just because I decided we should be partners and wanted…” He trailed off, feeling like the idiot he'd apparently been. Not that his feelings were anything less than authentic. Now, or then. But he'd been wrong to force his viewpoint, his feelings, his need for more, on her. Especially in the middle of what, apparently, was every bit as much a job for her as it was for him. “I'm the one who owes you an apology.”

“Finn—”

He lifted a hand. “Don't tell me anything that will breach trust with your—whoever it is. Not that I can't be trusted. You were right about that much. I would never do anything to intentionally thwart—”

“I know that,” she broke in. “That's why I want to tell you. Should have told you.”

He sighed, torn, because she was offering him everything he wanted. Or at least the first important step toward it. But, to do so, she had to violate other trusts, other agreements, and that wasn't fair. To them, or to her. “Just tell me what I need to know that will get us to the sapphire. I don't need to know the rest.”

She stared at him, disbelief clear on her face. “You've wanted my trust, pushed me to open up, and now that I am—”

“I realize it was wrong to do that to you. It's not my business to know. When—” She started to speak, but he talked over her. “When it's all said and done, and you've cleared it on your end, then yes. I'll want to hear everything. If you still want to tell me.”

“What does that mean?” she asked warily.

“It means, we need to find this sapphire and figure out how that will solve both of our problems. Then we'll work on sorting the rest out.”

She stared at him for the longest moment, then rolled her eyes and flopped back in her seat and folded her arms across her chest. Only Felicity could make such a move look elegant and graceful. If he hadn't been so distracted by this latest turn of events, he'd have smiled.

“You're being incorrigible again,” she said, “but in a way I find immensely unattractive.”

“I'd like to think I'm recovering the integrity I should have had with you all along.”

“You thought I was a jewel thief,” she all but shouted. “With very good reason, I might add. Why on earth would you have thought you'd needed to have any integrity around me? I couldn't fathom why you'd trust me as far as you could throw me. I'd certainly given you absolutely no reason to, despite your being very open and up front with me.” She eyed him, quite put out. “Why did you? Trust me, I mean. You're not a foolish man given to foolish behavior. What did you know?”

“Not nearly enough to jeopardize what I did.”

Her face fell then, and he immediately reached across the space between them and took her hands in his. “I didn't mean that as a reflection on you. Only on me. I won't say I don't know what got into me, I do. You got into me. You did from that first night we met at the museum gala. But I shouldn't have let that cloud my better judgment. Not because I was wrong about you. But because I put someone else's future at risk.”

“You are being so perverse. I thought you'd be happy that I was bringing you in.”

“I am,” he vowed. “But, right now, I can't let you knowingly risk what I foolishly risked. Even though we know we can trust each other, we have to handle this as professionals first. That's why we're here in the first place, and what the people who sent us here expect of us. Do you understand?”

“I do.” She slid her hands free. “I just don't think you realize what you're asking.”

“Meaning?”

“I work solo. My superiors expect me to use whatever resources I need to in order to complete the job, but bringing someone else in, sharing my intel in any fashion, that crosses the line.”

“So, what are you saying?”

“I'm saying that if you truly want to put job before us, with all our professional integrity intact, then this is where we part ways. I go after the sapphire with my own resources, and you continue on with yours. Let the better professional win.”

The car had pulled into the hotel's driveway, and Felicity popped open her door and exited before Finn could reply. He was out his door a second later. “Wait,” he called out, but she was already stalking through the entrance to the lobby. “Sean, grab something to eat, but I'd like you to stay on call.”

“I'm here as long as you need me.”

Finn rounded the front of the car, and two bellmen looked as though they might want to interfere on her behalf, but Finn skirted them both and caught up to her by the elevator. “Now, wait a minute, will you?”

The doors slid open, and she stepped coolly inside, folding her arms and looking straight ahead.

“Felicity, I think this is taking things to the extreme, don't you?”

The doors slid open on their floor, and she exited smoothly and swiftly, marching down the hallway to their door, not waiting for him before going inside. He had to catch the door from closing in his face.

“We've worked together up to this point, why—”

She rounded on him. “Why? Because you have some misguided notion that working together has somehow weakened our integrity in getting the job done. Did we handle everything perfectly? No. But then, no job goes perfectly, does it? You say you want to do what is right for our clients first. I think we were on our way to doing that, and, if you recall, I said I had a plan to make it work for us both, in the end. But no. Only now you say you want us to still be a team. Well, my apologies if I don't understand. We're either a team all the way, or we work solo. I don't see how you can have one, but not the other.” She got right up in his face. “You want to work with me? You want to be part of my personal life? Then you get all of me, all the time. All or nothing, Finn. I know it took me a while to see what I was risking losing. And it wasn't the sapphire. So, I'm all in. What about you?”

Finn just stood there, absorbing the fiery volcano that was Felicity Jane Trent in full tilt, explosive action. It was something to witness. “Are you armed?”

His question caught her off guard if the sudden confused look on her face was any indication. “When necessary.”

“Now?”

She frowned. “No, not now. Why?”

“Because I don't want to get shot when I tell you that you're really amazing all the time, but when you get angry, really angry, you put the royal in royally pissed in a way that is absolutely breathtaking.”

Her eyes narrowed. “There are other ways to maim a man, you know.”

But, angry as she was, she was still fighting a smile, which probably only served to piss her off more. It would have if it were him. She'd just laid her heart bare before him, and he'd teased her in response. But it was a lot to absorb, she was a lot to absorb, and so he'd taken a sidestep to give himself a moment to truly take in what she was offering. Because it was everything he wanted…and he wanted a lot. He took a cautious step closer. “I'm glad you're on my side.”

“Says who?”

“But mostly,” he said quietly, reaching out to brush a finger along her cheek. “Mostly, I'm glad you care enough to get that angry at me.”

“You idiot, of course I care! I—”

The rest of whatever she was going to say was cut off when he tugged her into his arms and kissed her silent. He was gratified that it took less than a second for her to respond and kiss him back. It took both of them a while longer still to come up for air. “I'm not sure,” he said, panting a little, “but given our track record, makeup sex might be lethal.”

“We're not making up,” she murmured against his lips. “I'm still royally pissed.” But she wove her fingers into his hair and tilted his head so she could gain greater access to his mouth.

He held her tightly and let her have her way with him. He had halfway decided to scoop her up and head to the bedroom, when she broke the kiss and pulled back. Not from his arms, but enough to look at him. “You make me insanely crazy, you realize that. It's all your fault I'm a screaming shrew.”

“Join the club.”

She grew serious. “What are we doing, Finn?”

“We're doing what comes next. Whatever that is. Nothing else has gone along any kind of normal path, and I'm certain whatever happens next won't either. Maybe we should just adopt a wait-and-see attitude and roll with it.”

“Roll with it, hm?”

“Roll with it. I do know what I'd like for us to be doing.”

Rather than roll her eyes, she actually tugged his hips closer and said, “Me, too. It beats the bloody hell out of figuring out how to work with each other.”

“I think we work together just like we do everything else together. Passionately, fully, and quite amazingly well. I don't want to lose you as a partner, in any sense, I just—” He broke off, and took a moment, pushing the wild, windblown curls from her face and tucking them behind her ear. “I want to do what's right for my client. I want to do what's right for you. I don't usually put what I want ahead of what others need. And when I realized I'd done just that, I—maybe I went a bit overboard in the opposite direction, but I don't want to work solo. Not this time. Not any time I don't have to.”

“So, you're happy then. That I confided in you? Because, with all that back in the car, I wasn't sure.”

He spun her around and backed her up against the door, making her squeal in surprise. “I'm ecstatic about that. It's everything I want. You're everything I want. And I want everything with you, from you.”

“Well, then?”

“We have other obligations. And I don't want you putting something else at risk, or someone else, because I'm pressing you to—”

She laid a finger across his lips. “I can handle my job, thanks.” Her smile was a bit saucy. “You, I'm not so sure about. But I'm willing to try.”

He nipped the ends of her fingers. “I just don't want to put you in a tough spot. We can resolve this case. And I'll still be there to deal with when it's done. That's all I was trying to say. I wanted to go back to putting the job we came to do first, as it should be, then us. But I didn't mean we had to go back to working alone.” He smiled, and kissed her fingertips. “In fact, I think we work better as a team. Which, if you think about it, is an advantage to the people we work for.”

“That was exactly the argument I intended to make.”

He pulled her closer and tilted her face up to his. “So, are we all done fighting now?”

“If I say yes, is makeup sex out of the question?”

He smiled. “Well, given your intel, how critical is it that we leave the room in the next, oh, fifteen or twenty minutes?”

“Actually,” she said, weaving her fingers through his hair and pulling his head down even closer. “We have to wait for another report to come in, so we might actually have a few hours.”

“Hours,” he said, savoring the very idea.

“I know. Being professionals first and all, whatever will we do with all that down time?”

He pulled her legs up around his hips and walked them both into the bedroom. “Strategize.” He dropped her onto the bed, and she pulled him down with her.

“Well, you are a master…strategist.” She tucked her feet around his ankles and wriggled beneath him.

“I love it when you call me master.”

Her eyes widened at that, but she was laughing as she used their locked ankles as leverage to roll him to his back. “Honestly,” she said, pushing their joined hands up over his head, bringing her face close to his in the process.

“Incorrigible,” he said. “I know.”

“We'll see who's the inveterate one…” She grinned quite wickedly and nipped his bottom lip. “And who's calling who master.”

He rolled her to her back, pinning her tightly to the bed, hands joined, pressed next to her head. “I have no problem letting you boss me around. Especially here.” He leaned down and took her bottom lip into his mouth and suckled it. “But I rather thought you liked it when I got a little…What would you call it? Neanderthal?”