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“You’re not here to make trouble tonight, are you, Princess?”
She crossed her own arms, forcing her breasts up so that they strained against the sweetheart neckline of her strapless dress, and mirrored his pose. “You know I don’t like to be called Princess. I’ve told you enough times over the years.”
This time, his lips actually did quirk into a smile, though a quick one. She’d always liked that she’d been one of the few people in the world who could make Jake Hoffman smile. His smile made her want to drop her panties then and there, an unfortunate side effect. At one time, she thought maybe they’d end up together, but their lives had gone different ways.
“I know,” he said. “And I’ve told you I don’t care. I like the way you look when you’re annoyed.”
Her smile came unbidden. She could never seem to stay annoyed at Jake. “How are things with the lizard?”
Leonard, the lizard, had earned the nickname at her family’s summer cottage on the beach when she’d been about eight years old. Jake would have been ten, Leonard twelve. Leonard had pleaded all summer for two pet lizards and when he finally got them, he’d been absolutely terrified of the tiny animals. Ana and Jake had been merciless, though the jerk deserved it after he tried to get rid of one of them in Ana’s bed. And when that hadn’t worked, he’d turned to torturing the poor creatures until Jake had intervened and set them free. Legend had it there were still little lizards running around the former Staffordshire property.
Jake shrugged. “Same as always.”
Jake, like his father and grandfather before him, headed security for Staffordshire International. Since Leonard got Staffordshire International after their grandmother’s death, Leonard also got Jake.
“Are you happy there?”
Jake shrugged and Ana knew he wouldn’t answer the question.
“Jake, there you are. I’m not paying you to stand behind potted plants and flirt... Oh.”
Ana smiled the same fake smile she’d perfected as a child. She wasn’t going to be the one to make a scene. “Cousin,” she greeted.
“What are you doing here?”
She faked confusion. “I got a lovely gilded invitation. Are you saying you didn’t invite me?”
Ana loved nothing more than pissing off her jackass of a cousin. This smile was real. Sometimes even she had trouble believing they came from the same family. She and Leonard had been playmates as children, but after their parents died, he’d changed. And not for the better. He’d fallen in with a bad crowd at school and he’d never seemed to want to crawl his way out, no matter the opportunities. She spent so many years trying to be his friend as children, and again after they were left as the only two Staffordshires, but he seemed to thrive on being a horrible, manipulative person. She’d seen him hurt too many people in the past to want anything to do with him, even if he was the only family she had left.
“Came to get one last look at the necklace, did you? Still pissed that the family left it to me and not you?”
It hadn’t been left to him. It had actually been left to Ana’s father as the oldest male heir, as had been done for generations. Unfortunately, both her parents and Leonard’s parents had preceded their mother in death. Grandmother hadn’t been able to do anything about it.
Leonard showed off his perfectly straight, overly white teeth, his version of a smile.
“You know it’s always been my favorite thing this name has brought me,” she said.
Grandmother would’ve shown off the diamond in a museum if it helped someone in need, but never for it to be a spectacle. Her grandmother had actually worn the diamond most of the time. It was completely inappropriate to wear around their small beach town in Massachusetts, but that had never stopped Gretchen Staffordshire. Playing dress up with her grandmother and the diamond were some of the happiest memories of Ana’s life.
“Just remember who owns the necklace,” Leonard spat. “Jake, your job is to be my bodyguard. That means you stay with me, not her.”
Leonard turned on his heel, wobbling a bit because he hadn’t inherited the Staffordshire grace, and stalked away.
Jake stepped back and looked at her from the top of her updo—held up with an incredible amount of bobby pins and decorated with an antique clip—down to the tips of her red pointed-toe pumps. If asked, she’d lose the entire ensemble for him in a heartbeat.
“Always nice to see you, Princess.”
Ana took a deep breath once Jake followed her cousin across the room. He seemed to suck all of the air out of her vicinity whenever he was near. On the surface he fit in with all of the other suit-wearing folks milling around, but there was always something different about him. Something simmering just under the surface. He was like an uncut diamond in a sea of polished gemstones.
Jake stood between her and the diamond. Jake and his stupid sense of right and wrong. Her entire plan hinged on the fact he’d be guarding the diamond tonight. Leonard would be taking it home tomorrow to prep for the sale. Ana had used all of her remaining contacts in the world where she and Leonard had grown up. No one knew what he was doing with the diamond. Tonight was her last, her only, chance.
So she was going to do the one thing she’d always wanted to do but would never let herself. She was going to get down and dirty with Jake.
She’d distract him with her body, and once she’d wrung every ounce of pleasure out of him, she’d replace the Staffordshire Diamond with the glass replica in her purse and stroll out of the museum, into her new life on a small private island in the South Pacific.
* * *
Anastasia Staffordshire.
