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“Where’s your girlfriend?” I can’t blush on command, but I can do embarrassed. I pretend to be just that. “I read the papers. I’ve seen your picture together…”
“Fishing in these waters requires a permit,” he says.
“You’re a hot guy—”
“Rich, infamous.”
“—can’t blame a girl for, uh, fishing.”
“I’ll give that cast a bite.” He smiles, and it’s still not guarded, but there’s a hint of something else.
He can burn with his words, and I like that kind of flame. If I wasn’t planning on robbing him…
“We went our separate ways two weeks ago.” Hendrick takes a sip.
When I met him. When he was waiting for her.
Something in me spins slow.
And I force myself back on track.
He doesn’t mention Jac, but I’m starting to believe he saw us talking. There’s no law against it, but if Hendrick is as tricky as I think he is, his mind must be ticking. This is no longer just me sliding into the party and hopefully being able to get to the third-floor office and grabbing the necklace if it’s there.
Hendrick is showing interest in me, and it’s like a mixing of chemicals between him and me. It’s hot, fizzing, waiting to combust with one more drop either way.
He’s seen me with Jac—I can’t prove it, but there’s no way he missed that—and the chemistry there was unstable, chaotic, just as this is controlled volatility…controlled by Hendrick.
A man who can do that is examining each and every angle.
I’m an infamous, world-class thief.
I keep my face out of things, and very few clients have seen me un-costumed.
This is as close to that as I’ve been.
“Well,” I say, “I don’t think most women will shed a tear over that.”
He nods, takes a sip. “And you?”
“Your ego’s big enough without me adding to that.”
He laughs softly, gaze shifting to the door a moment, eyes hardening. But when he looks back at me, they’re just like before. Utterly mesmerizing, everything except the heat that pulls there.
I stand. “Should I go?”
“I’m not asking. But to be fair it wasn’t my best line.” He pauses. “It wasn’t a line, though, not really.”
“You’re asking if I’m getting hot and bothered?”
He smiles slow, reluctant. “We both know the answer to that. Right from the moment we met.”
I jerk a little, almost spilling the drink.
“I don’t like games,” he says, making no move to approach me. “You felt it, too. Downstairs, when you came in, when we first met. The reaction? The pull? Two magnets in each other’s fields.”
“Wouldn’t it work better if one of us was steel and the other a magnet?”
He shakes his head, finishing his drink, setting down the glass, and straightening. “That’s boring. Magnets are more fun if it’s one magnet attracting, or another magnet repelling. Nothing stronger than those forces, Elena.”
